How to hide a water tower (water castle) ... the Valence way

If you needed to build a couple of water towers to support a local community, there are two ways you could go about it.

One would be to hire an architect and a civil engineer to build a round or rectangular structure to hold the stuff that’s currently in short supply (to drink at least) in Gloucester this week.

The other approach is to commission a sculptor to help disguise the enormous structure by making it a work of public art that is a delight to look at.

The city of Valence took this latter approach when in 1970 they built two “futuristic water castles” (deux châteaux d’eau futuristes) in the middle of a lake in Le Parc Jean Perdrix.

The sculptor was Philolaos Tloupas (no English translation of his Wikipedia page yet).

More snaps over at Flickr.