Modernising Post-war France: Architecture and Urbanism during Les Trente Glorieuses

305 Pages·2022·78.692 MB·English

by  Nicholas Bullock

MODERNISING POST-WAR FRANCE
This book is about the role played by architects, engineers and planners in transforming France during
the three post-war decades of growing prosperity, a period when modernisation was a central priority
of the state, promising a way forward from the shame of defeat in 1940 to a place at the centre of the
new Europe.
The first part of the book examines the scale of transformation, showing how architecture and
urbanism both served the cause of modernisation and shaped the identity of the new France. Main-
stream modernism was co-opted to the service of the state, from major public buildings to Gaullist
plans for the transformation of Paris to establish the city as the ‘capital’ of Europe.
By contrast, the second part of the book explores the critique of state-sponsored modernisation by
radical architects from Le Corbusier to the young Turks of the 1960s such as Georges Candilis and the
students who attacked the banality of mainstream modernism and its inability to address the growing
problems of France’s cities. Following May 1968, the Beaux-Arts was closed, the Grand Prix de Rome,
symbol of the old order, abolished – for a while the establishment might continue as before, but progres-
sive architecture was set on a new course.
Beautifully illustrated and written to be accessible to all, the book sets the discussion of architecture
and urbanism in its social, political and economic contexts. As such, it will appeal both to students and
scholars of the history of architecture and urbanism and to those with a wider interest in France’s post-
war history.
Nicholas Bullock, a Fellow of King’s College, was Professor of the History of Architecture and Urban-
ism of the 20th Century in the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, and lectured at
the Architectural Association in London for over 40 years. Originally admitted for modern languages,
he read architecture at Cambridge and completed his Ph.D. under the supervision of Sir Leslie Martin.
He was a founder member of the Martin Centre for Architecture and Urban Studies, established in
1967. He has published widely on the architecture, housing and planning issues of the 20th century in
Britain, Germany and France.

M O D E R N I S I N G
P O S T - W A R
F R A N C E
A R C H I T E C T U R E A N D
U R B A N I S M D U R I N G L E S
T R E N T E G L O R I E U S E S
NICHOLAS BULLOCK
Cover image: Charles de Gaulle and Pierre Sudreau, the minister of construction, visiting
the exhibition Demain … Paris in April 1961 © Alamy.
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 Nicholas Bullock
The right of Nicholas Bullock to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bullock, Nicholas, author.
Title: Modernising post-war France: architecture and urbanism during the trente
gloreiuses / Nicholas Bullock.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022009448 (print) | LCCN 2022009449 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367556501 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780367556518 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003094562 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Modern movement (Architecture)—France. | Architecture and society—
France—History—20th century. | City planning—France—History—20th century. |
Reconstruction (1939–1951)—France.
Classification: LCC NA1048.5.M63 B85 2023 (print) | LCC NA1048.5.M63 (ebook) |
DDC 720.944/0904—dc23/eng/20220714
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022009448
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022009449
ISBN: 978-0-367-55650-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-55651-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-09456-2 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003094562
Typeset in Minion
by codeMantra
CONTENTS
Preface vi
Abbreviations viii
Introduction: architecture, urbanism and les trente glorieuses 1
PART 1
MODERNISATION TAKES COMMAND: FROM AUSTERITY TO AFFLUENCE
1. Reconstruction 1945–56: rebuilding or modernisation? 11
2. Industrialising the building industry 37
3. Te grands ensembles and the modernisation of housing, 1953–62 65
4. Modern France at home: shaping the new domestic ideal, 1953–63 93
5. Public architecture of the 1950s: towards a new architecture for state and industry 115
6. ‘15,000 hectares to reconquer’: the struggle to modernise Paris, 1955–65 143
7. Modernising the Paris region: from the SDAU to the New Towns, 1965–75 171
PART 2
OPPOSING MODERNISATION: FROM RESISTANCE TO REVOLT
8. Modernism versus modernisation: the Unité d’habitation at Marseille 199
9. Radicals and opposition to the modern city in the 1960s 221
10. Revolt and the search for new directions, 1968–73 247
Epilogue: 1975, France transformed 277
Image Credits 283
Index 287
PREFACE
France, so close, so familiar but ‘other’ has always fascinated. The sense of it changing is something that
was borne in on me, first by French exchanges in the early 1950s not far from Le Havre, at that time in
the full flood of reconstruction and so different from the sleepy village where I was then staying. As a
teenager, speeding on the boat train through the Paris suburbs to the Gare du Nord, the signs of change,
for example the construction of what was to become the new town at Sarcelles, were there for all to see.
Later, during the vacations spent in the early 1960s as an undergraduate in the dingy inner suburbs to
the east of Paris, visiting the region’s major projects, the new airport at Orly, the new exhibition hall at
La Défense or the new estates at Pantin or Massy, reinforced this sense of a future promised. Despite the
ever-present reminders of the past, my memories of the France of the 1950s and 1960s are of the onward
march of modernisation at every hand.
But writing about post-war France, however familiar it might feel and however well one might be
supported by the conventional machinery of scholarship, would have been much more difficult, not to
say foolhardy, without the help and encouragement of French friends and colleagues. An important
starting point for the book was reading Danièle Voldman’s La reconstruction des villes françaises de
1940 à 1954. A shared research interest in reconstruction after the Second World War, beginning at
a conference in Beirut, led to an invitation from Danièle to join a seminar exploring aspects of hous-
ing and urbanism in post-war France. Members of the seminar (and its successor) based in Paris 1
Panthéon-Sorbonne – Annie Fourcault, Patrice Gourbin, Paul Landauer, Benoît Pouvreau and Sylvie
Lévy-Vroelant – have been invaluably helpful as I have tried to navigate the complexities of the pe-
riod. Through them and then, further, through friends and colleagues like Luc Baboulet, Catharine
Blain, Hélène Carroux, Anne-Marie Châtelet, Anne Debarre, Yves Delemontey, Jean-François Drevon,
Richard Klein, Caroline Maniaque, Guillemette Morel-Journel and Pieter Uyttenhove, I have been en-
abled to see France ‘from the inside’. Together, in a way that would otherwise have been impossible,
they have helped me get a feeling for those issues, whether the status of the engineer or the uneasy
relationship between Paris and its suburbs, which, unstated, may be readily apparent to ‘natives’ but not
immediately to ‘outsiders’.
Closer to home, I have benefitted greatly from the comments and encouragement of both students
and colleagues in Cambridge and at the Architectural Association. The book took its present form, first
as a lecture series given in Cambridge to architectural students and then to students at the summer
school run jointly by Pembroke and King’s Colleges. I have benefitted handsomely from their criticisms,
Preface vii
their questions and their perceptions. No less valuable have been the responses of colleagues Peter
Carolin, Peter Dickens, Dean Hawkes, Hugo Hinsley, Sebastian Macmillan, François Penz and Nick
Ray to drafts of chapters and ideas for the structure of the book. The final form of the book owes a great
deal to the tactful and skilful editing of Tom Neville and Florence Dassonville’s unflagging energy in
securing not just the images, so important a part of the book, but the permission to reproduce them, a
task rendered no easier by the pandemic. To Fran Ford and the team at Routledge who have smoothed
the processes of production with such skill, I am most grateful.
Finally, the book is dedicated to my wife. With unfailing patience, she has watched over its develop-
ment, reading every word, offering encouragement – where due – and spurring it on to completion and
to the promise, beyond, of a new beginning.
Nicholas Bullock
Cambridge
December 2021
ABBREVIATIONS
AFNOR Association française de normalisation
ASCORAL Assemblée des constructeurs pour la rénovation architecturale
ATBAT Atelier des bâtisseurs
AUA Atelier d’urbanisme et d’architecture
BCPN Bâtiments civils et palais nationaux
CAC Centre d’archives contemporaines
CAF Caisse d’allocations familiales
CCURP Commissariat à la construction et à l’ubanisme dans la région parisienne
CDU Centre de documentation urbaine
CGP Commisariat général du Plan
CIAM Congrès international d’architecture moderne
CJW Candilis-Josic-Woods
CNIT Centre national des industries et des techniques
CSTB Centre scientifique et technique du bâtiment
DATAR Délégation à l’aménagement du territoire et à l’action régionale
DdA Direction de l’architecture
DPLG Diplômé par le gouvernement
ENSBA École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts (Beaux-arts)
EPA établissement public d’aménagement
GPR Grand Prix de Rome
HBM habitations à bon marché
HLM habitation à loyer modéré
IAURP Institut d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la région parisienne
ISAI Immeuble sans affectation individuelle
ITBTP Institut technique du bâtiment et des travaux publics
MRU ministère de la Reconstruction et de l’Urbanisme; from June 1953 MRL, ministère de
la Reconstruction et du Logement; from June 1958 ministère de Construction; from
January 1966 ministère d’Équipment et de l’Aménagement du Territoire (combining
Construction and Travaux Publics)
Abbreviations ix
PADOG Plan d’aménagement et d’organisation générale de la région parisienne
PAEE plan d’aménagement, d’extension et d’embellissement
PAN Programme architecture nouvelle
PRA plan de reconstruction et d’aménagement
PUD Plan d’urbanisme directeur
SAM Salon des arts ménagers
SCIC Société centrale immobilière de la caisse
SDAU Schéma directeur d’aménagement et d’urbanisme (SDAURP Schéma directeur
d’aménagement et d’urbanisme de la région de Paris)
SEM société d’économie mixte
SFU Société française des urbanistes
SI Secteur industrialisé
UAM Union des artistes modernes
UP unité pédagogiques
ZAN zone d’agglomération nouvelle
ZUP zone à urbaniser par priorité