Lake Montbel is a reservoir created in 1985 and located in the Pyrenees, between the departments of the Ariège and Aude. Fed by the waters of the Hers-Vif, each summer a large percentage of the lake irrigates hectares of agricultural land, while a small proportion, left at a constant level, and undisturbed for 35 years, has become so biologically rich that its ecological status is listed as a ‘Zone Spéciale de Conservation under the EU project 2000 Zone Natural.’ Despite this, the lake’s managers have selected Coucoo, a private company which develops luxury resorts in natural settings, to build a hotel complex around the edges of the constant lake, to offer their clients experiences of ‘disconnection’ – ‘out of time.’ Towards the southern edge of the lake sits a tiny island, apparently untouched – also ‘out of time.’ This writer enters the scene as someone who has spent the past 18 years swimming back and forth across the  island on summer evenings, to and from the island. Roaming around the edges of the lake and swimming across it, this site-writing pauses at several points to consider what this untouched island, once a hilltop, its edges now located in an constant yet artificial lake under threat, offers utopic practice.

‘Out of Time: Lake Constant and its Island – A Site-Writing,’ is published in Instituting Worlds: Architecture and Islands co-edited by Catharina Gabrielsson and Marko Jobst, (Routledge, 2024).

https://www.routledge.com/Instituting-Worlds-Architecture-and-Islands/Gabrielsson-Jobst/p/book/9781032498836?srsltid=AfmBOopbjzOirkstyBOhfivPeSdcjSWA5_gH5XbOrXJ2T5qD52UvOt2E