High-rise buildings in France : a modern heritage 1945-1975

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High-rise buildings in France

A modem héritage 1945-1975

Special Bulletin issue | March 2020

The reader, a contemporary observer of the strong resurgence of the urban tower block, will certainly tind critical material of choice in the case studies developed in this new special Bulletin docomomo France. The genesis, the influence of the models, the singularities, the reception and the future, quite simply the history of these objects that are scattered around the country like so many village church steeples, concentrating both the hopes and the uncertainties of modernity. The stories of known and lesser-known tower blocks recounted in this Bulletin shed light on the relationships between the context, local circumstances, and the material and cultural situations of high-rise buildings. The tower block as both an economic and symbolic instrument of urban development is rapidly becoming the target for a form of critical violence. The weakness of the arguments thus reveals the ideological character of the debates and probably explains, more than the other reasons put forward, the destruction and customization of all kinds, the most common ingredients of which are revegetation and artificial lighting. Even though the integrity of the residential belfry of the Perret Tower in Amiens could not be preserved, interesting discoveries are still possible among the precision and rigour of the European Tower in Thionville, the sculptural plasticity of the tower blocks of Grenoble, the sculptural singularity of that of La Duchère or the restrained purism of the Viollet Tower in Angers. Other aspects open up scope for reflection : the tower blocks of a region, those of a city, the face of an administrative programme that chooses the archetype of the tower block and its base to represent of its social dimension, the face of the high- rise architect, that of the architect of series, typological manipulations and morphological inventions.