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The thematic inventory operation of the high schools extends all over the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region of France. It comprises all the public high schools, with a corpus of 290 institutions (156 in Aquitaine, 92 in Poitou-Charentes et 52 in Limousin). In ex-Aquitaine (5 departments), the inventory started in 2016, carried out then by Laetitia Maison-Soulard, creator of the operation “Histoires de Bahuts”, “School Stories”.One of the largest high schools of Aquitaine, the lycée Victor-Louis of Talence (Gironde department), was considerably enlarged during the “Trente Glorieuses”, the thirty years of post-war economic growth in France. Period par excellence of the serial architecture, which the historical context imposed, the early 1960’s also created opportunities for some architects to construct “tailor-made” buildings. Pierre Mathieu supervised the construction of the lycée of Valence from 1949, even before it was extended. From a country house used as an annexe to the lycée Montaigne of Bordeaux, P. Mathieu has gradually created a modern educational institution until the dawn of the 1970’s. He hired two artist friends: Joseph Rivière then Pierre Boissonnet who worked within the 1% for Art programme or to bring the decorative addition to the architectural constructions.Mathieu, Chief architect of the “bâtiments civils et des palais nationaux”, the Civil buildings and National Palaces, major builder at Bordeaux, did he strictly apply the theories learned at the “academic” School? Was he thus a follower of architectural styles that were in trends at a time, for example the international style? In any case, he probably strived to fully satisfy to the order.

In the late 19th century, Bordeaux had two collections of plaster casts: one at the University, the other at the Municipal School of Fine Arts and Decorative Arts. These collections, which were built and developed thanks to the dynamism of local elites and the support of the Ministry of Public Education, were a fundamental part of scientific (archaeology and art history) and artistic education. Between 1896 and 1898, the connections between the two institutions strengthened. Academics were increasingly involved in the management of the Municipal School’s administration. Finally, Pierre Paris, professor of Archaeology and Art History at the University, became the Municipal School’s headmaster in 1898. It is in this context that an ambitious and original project emerged across the French territory: to create an Institute of Art and Archaeology meant to make students (University) and artists (Municipal School) work together. The present paper aims to review the history of this project and its failure.

This article first of all presents the evolution of collective gardens in Bordeaux and its metropolitan area from the nineteenth century up to the present day. In a second part, there is an examination of their typology and of their current functions. The study shows that shared gardens are the most well-established, but that allotment or family gardens still survive under certain conditions. The results of a programme of interviews and a quantitative survey carried out in five collective gardens in Bordeaux show that these gardens bring many benefits apart from merely providing food. Indeed, this food function is no longer predominant and the gardeners themselves usually underline the educational and therapeutic roles of the garden and its contributions to creating social links.

The Heritage and Inventory Services of Bordeaux, in the recently-formed Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes region, have recently undertaken a study of the aeronautical industrial heritage. This was, and is, a leading sector at the regional level and comprises four sites belonging to Dassault Aviation, the oldest of which is the Merignac factory, near Bordeaux. The plant was originally built between 1949 and 1966 to the designs of the architect Georges Hennequin (1893-1969) who had been a collaborator since 1930 of Marcel Bloch (1892-1986), who adopted the name of Dassault after the Second World War. Hennequin contributed to the development of a specific type of architecture for aviation, renewing the aesthetics of industrial construction and integrating notions of scientific management. From the interwar period up to the Cold War, the study of Bloch’s factories and the Merignac buildings in particular captures the detail of architectural evolution in relation to aircraft production. This article is a contribution then to a little-known aspect of architectural history and shows how the erecting halls of Merignac refer to the aesthetic and technical notions of the time in which hygienics, the division of labour and flexibility were the watchwords. More specifically, the analysis of the assembly building designed for the Mirage IV bomber in the 1960s demonstrates how the company became a high-tech one.

On 17 January 1886, the University of Bordeaux inaugurated a new kind of museum in France. In one of the courtyards of the recently built ‘palace of the Faculties’, Pierre Paris had installed some plaster-cast copies of Greek and Roman statues and architectural sculptures from the most important European collections and the principal Greek archaeological sites. This young professor, who had studied previously in the French School of Athens, was in charge of the archaeology courses, a recent academic discipline founded in Bordeaux in 1876 by Maxime Collignon. At that time, in France, the reform of higher education carried out by the Ministry of Public Instruction according to the German model had led to the adoption of these new subjects of study and the installation of scientific collections, seen to be essential. Maxime Collignon had demonstrated their necessity in a report he had written after a mission to Germany in 1882. But in fact, it was some years before the universities could launch such facilities, due to lack of space, of money and of incentive. The University of Bordeaux was the first to open a real and official ‘Plaster cast museum’ when such places were only in a process of conception at other universities. The study of this collection helps us to understand the diffusion of this idea of a plaster cast museums in the late nineteenth century in France, its appropriation by the Universities and the various stages of the process of development at the heart of education system.

A major discovery in the Gironde department, the Bellion collection of a coach-building family. In 1874, Louis Bellion settled in Libourne and established his coach-builder’s firm. The collection that this firm has left today tells the story of a family deeply attached to its past and to its profession. The firm has kept all its archives and equipment from the creation of the works up to the present day. It is one of the most complete collections in the Gironde, comprising not only the family archives but also its forge with all its tools. A preliminary study of this collection which is destined to become part of the museum of horse-drawn vehicles at Bourg, in the Gironde, allows for a better understanding of the social and professional aspects of this coach-builder’s family in Libourne, during a period which saw the progressive replacement of horse-drawn vehicles by motor cars. It is a collection of ethnographic interest that also gives documentation about some of the vehicles held at the museum of the horse-drawn carriage as well as at the national museum of carriages and tourism, in Compiègne.

The Chartrons neighbourhood of Bordeaux was traditionally occupied by wine merchants, and has a specific urban form of densely packed buildings called ‘chais’, wine cellars, which combine the noble commercial activities of the merchants and their more functional storage ones in single buildings. During the first half of the twentieth century, the neighbourhood went into decline, leaving many of the warehouses without any use. Since the mid-1980s, however, the neighbourhood is finding new life, thanks to the re-use of these long, neighbouring buildings. Since 1993 one particularly large area known as the ‘grand îlot’ has undergone an interesting operation of reconversion, operating at two levels, that of the city as a whole and that of the individual buildings, giving this ‘new’ neighbourhood its historical filiation.

The Atlantic Wall stretches from the Spanish border to northern Norway. Within this system there are five bases for submarines: Dunkirk, Saint-Nazaire, Lorient, La Rochelle and Bordeaux. After a period of purgatory, with the painful memories of the wartime air raids which destroyed the cities around the bases, the buildings which the Atlantic Wall comprises have now entered the spheres of culture and tourism. What do these buildings bear witness to? Their frank modernism puts them at a precise moment in the history of architecture. Their heterogeneity makes them like UFOs, without any relation of scale or form to civil architecture. Their specific techniques of dissimulation and camouflage created new landscapes. But can these buildings be freed from the memories of their original military purpose? What message is delivered when they are recycled for new, cultural, leisure or commercial usages? Two submarine bases at Saint-Nazaire and at Lorient, are focussed on in this article.

Jean-Baptiste Dufart is essentially known as the architect who, between 1793 and 1800, designed two major neo-classic works in the port of Bordeaux : the French Theater and the Fenwick House. But his creative ambition and the modernity which characterizes his work is also to be seen in more confidential projects such as the reconstruction of the Burck property at Ambés. From 1786, this building demonstrates the architect's innovatory and creative powers at a time when, still a young man, Dufart was not yet officially an architect. In this context, the analysis of the reconstruction of this wine-producing house serves to reveal both the ambitions and the talents of Jean-Baptiste Dufart and his innovations in the field of rural architecture, at the very beginning of his career.

Build during the German occupation, the submarine base of Bordeaux active during hardly more than a year still crystallizes the painful memories of the dark hours of the « Port de la Lune ». Nevertheless, the bunker attracts artists, film-makers, visual artists and musicians fascinated by the spirit of the place since the 1960’s. Institutionalized at the beginning of 1990’s, the submarine base became a space dedicated to the yachting before contemporary art at the beginning of the XXIth century. Nowadays at the heart of the project of redevelopment of the wet docks in the urban area of Bacalan, the submarine base questions and intrigues its visitors on its past, but also – and especially – on its future.

Although it was first designed at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the meridian circle only really began to equip astronomical observatories around 1850. It rapidly became an essential instrument for positional astronomy and its intense use lasted for more than a century. A recent inventory of France's heritage of astronomical instruments and sites, carried out under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Research, offered the chance to study eleven of these instruments, along with the architectural and technical aspects of the buildings which house them.

The building of the faculty of medicine and pharmacy was constructed from 1880 to 1888, following the plans of the architect Jean-Louis Pascal (1837-1920), after an architectural competition organised in 1876. It is one of the principal public buildings in Bordeaux dating from these early years of the Third French Republic. In 1902 the building was enlarged, according to the plans of the same architect. The ensemble can be seen as emblematic of the Republic’s determined policies where higher education was concerned. It also crystallized the complicated relations between the city of Bordeaux and the State. Pascal’s building is the result of an extremely intelligent process of conception, integrating the lessons which emerged from the nineteenth century’s various architectural currents.

Au sortir de la seconde guerre mondiale, les facultés bordelaises étouffent dans leurs locaux du centre-ville édifiés sous la troisième République. Un ambitieux programme de transferts des établissements universitaires vers les banlieues de Pessac, Talence et Gradignan se met en place à partir des années 1950. L’architecte René-André Coulon (1908-1997) conçoit la faculté des sciences de Bordeaux, envisagée alors comme une véritable faculté « pour l’an 2000 ». Tout en disposant largement les différents bâtiments dans l’espace du campus, Coulon s’attache à leur donner un style original, tout empreint de rigueur et de rationalisme, mais qui montre également quelques écarts notables avec les normes régissant alors les constructions universitaires. Talence est la première réalisation universitaire de Coulon, qui travaillera par la suite sur des programmes fort différents, qu’il s’agisse du campus de HEC à Jouy-en-Josas ou de celui de la faculté des sciences de Paris-centre avec Édouard Albert.

Sport facilities networks are an integral part of sport history and development in France. Starting as a snobbish activity, in one century sport became a popular phenomenon. Modern sport, going against traditional sport, met with a great many obstacles. On top of this, the legislation was not favourable since it forbade any association. Therefore the role of the State was essential. But, it was the 1901 Law concerning associations which made it truly possible for the sporting networks to be formed and for sport facilities networks to be initiated, the State taking over in a second time. On seaside resorts, the hierarchy of which was already established before WWI, the English were at the beginning of the various sports. The upper classes followed and participated actively to its spreading. Sport facilities which were private at the start had to be supported by - State. But after massive public investments during the eighties, sport facilities networks prove to be underused a major part of the year. On the opposite, the golf courses of the Atlantic, the Channel, and the North Sea Coasts seaside resorts which are network organised because they go along with property programmes, get a return all over the year.