Maison Bleue, Art brut house and mosaic garden in Dives-sur-Mer, France

Maison Bleue is a house at 13 rue des Frères-Bisson in Dives-sur-Mer whose exterior and 300 m² garden are covered in mosaics of salvaged glass, crockery and earthenware set in cement, with blue dominating. A metal scaffold screens the facade, whose roofline steps into crenellated, dome-like forms edged in blue and green. The garden holds a dozen or so miniature monuments, including a three-metre tower to the dog Laïka topped by a Sputnik.

Euclides Ferrera da Costa, an illiterate Portuguese-born mason, bought the 300 m² plot at 13 rue des Frères-Bisson in 1950. Receiving a disability pension from 1954 because of tuberculosis, he began building in 1957, starting with a monument to Laïka, the dog sent into space on Sputnik. He worked until 1977, and the town bought the house on 13 December 1989; it was listed as a monument historique on 26 November 1991.

Da Costa decorated his garden with miniature religious buildings, including a three-metre-high Notre-Dame-de-Lourdes with four windows, a bell tower and a grotto, plus the basilicas of Sainte-Rita de Cascia and Sainte-Thérèse de Lisieux. Naive statues once stood inside; after thefts they were replaced by life-size photographs. A geometric-patterned path leads to the chapels.

The site is at 13 rue des Frères-Bisson, near the former Tréfimétaux factory, on a 300 m² plot. A metal structure erected in 2005 screens the house from rain, so the mosaic facade is seen through scaffolding. The garden holds a dozen or so miniature monuments along narrow mosaic paths; watch your step and keep to the marked route.

The first element da Costa built, in 1957, was a monument about three metres tall to Laïka, the dog sent into space on Sputnik; it resembles the lower levels of the Eiffel Tower and carries a Sputnik on top. He was moved by what he called the solitary death of an animal in the infinite for the needs of science.