Is this Paris’s best-kept secret? If not, it sure must come close! Just a few short stops from the Eiffel Tower, the 150-member La Calvalerie Tennis Club is a throwback to the roaring 1920s. With a fully-heated red clay tennis court, shower, and locker room, the club sits in a wooden hall atop a century-old art-deco building.
Its standout feature is, without question, an incredible honeycomb-styled cantilevered roof. The work of Robert Farradèche, a famous architect from the interwar period, most famous for Garage Aerien, a late 1920s multi-storey car park located in the heart of upscale Rue de la Cavalerie, the 1924 building has a fully translucent wooden arch roof featuring 1,400 pieces of wood set into a steep parabolic arc frame.
Immortalised by the Parisian City Council as a monument of cultural significance in 1986, the wooden roof was destroyed and entirely rebuilt – at the cost of € 2 million – following severe storms that swept through the city at the turn of the century.
“If you have dreamed of playing tennis in an atypical place, look no further: the La Calvalerie Tennis Club will delight you with its architecture, simplicity, and yesteryear charm,” the club said. “Many personalities have walked the TENNIS DE LA CAVALERIE court over the years, including Berthe Seurat, Jean Augustin, and Jean Brugnon, the Three Musketeers of French Tennis.”
Fancy a Hit? All-Timber Domed Roof to Hang Over Centre Court
In recent years, timber-roofed tennis courts have been growing in popularity. In October, Wood Central revealed that one of the world’s most magnificent timber roofs could be built in Brazil after New York-based architect Victor Ortiz revealed plans to construct the country’s largest private tennis court in Cuiabá, Mato Grosso – close to the geographical heart of South America.
The GS Tennis Court for Mato Grosso – designed by Victor Ortiz Architecture, with support from Gerad Epp’s StructureCraft and Timbau Estruturas: “Spans up to 60m (200 feet) and introduces the structural concept of achieving curves using straight timber beams,” said StructurceCraft. “The 2,500 square metre (27,000 square feet) domed roof opens to a central oculus that allows for unobstructed views of the sky, and the undulating structure peels up at the bases to provide glimpses of the surrounding nature.”
