Parents, a daughter, and three houses we couldn't leave the way we found them.
It started with a building nobody wanted. It stood on the beach at Le Pouliguen, looking across the Bay of La Baule, and it had been neglected for long enough that its character was hard to find. The garden had become a car park.
We took it on anyway, my parents and I, and spent three years giving it back what it had lost. With an architect and local artisans, the house got its stone back, its windows, and a garden where the cars used to be. That house is Ker Gonan.
The word on the sand
The sand in front of it gave us our name. Estran is the French word for the foreshore: the stretch of shore between high and low tide, which the sea covers and uncovers twice a day. It is never quite land and never quite sea, and it never looks the same two days running. It seemed a fair description of what we wanted our houses to be. Somewhere you feel at home, while being away.
Once the house was finished, keeping it to ourselves felt wrong. So we opened its doors to guests, and Maison Estran began.
Then Sardinia
Il Polpo Nero sits at the top of the hill of Perd'e Sali, near Pula, in the Mediterranean scrub, looking straight out to sea. It is named after the black octopus painted on its wall, and it is our least serious house: three floors, a rooftop, a pool, and more nods to pop culture than a house strictly needs. (Una giornata follows a summer day there, hour by hour.)
It is looked after by a small team in Pula who know the coast far better than we do. Which brings us to the part we care about most.
How we host
We host the way we live there. Someone at the door when you arrive. An aperitivo on the first evening. Linen on every bed. A number to call, and a person at the other end of it.
Before anyone arrives, we talk to them: who is coming, what the week should feel like, what we can arrange. Every booking goes through the same people who designed the rooms. That is us.
Door 80
On 3 January 2026, we pushed door 80 for the first time. It is at the end of Derb Snan, a quiet impasse in Dar el Bacha, in the medina of Marrakech. Behind it were two old riads, side by side, already joined by a single door, their walls shared with the gardens of the royal palace. Because we are at the end of the street, against those gardens, you hear nothing but birds.
Since then we have been turning the two into one house: taking down the wall between them, opening the rooms to the light, turning an old kitchen into a bedroom. The craftsmen worked through the heat of the summer. Amine, who has looked after the house for twenty years and knows it better than anyone, sends us videos when we are not there, which is most of the time. Dar Estran opens at the end of 2026, with eight bedrooms that can be booked one at a time or all together. You can follow the work on our Instagram, in a series called Becoming Dar Estran.
Not perfect
Three houses, then, each on its own schedule. One where the sea leaves twice a day. One where it barely moves. One with no sea at all, just a patio open to the sky.
None of them is perfect, and we have stopped pretending otherwise. Maison Estran is a family-owned concept-à-vivre, shaped by several generations. It's not perfect, but it's who we are.
Lola
The houses
Ker Gonan, Le Pouliguen, Brittany. Eight guests, on the beach. Summer 2027.
Il Polpo Nero, Pula, Sardinia. Ten guests, pool and rooftop.
Dar Estran, Marrakech. Eight bedrooms, opening at the end of 2026. Be the first to know.
