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French architecture is on the brink of change. If Rationalist tendencies achieve critical mass, they could prove the catalyst for a dynamic and significant cultural moment. Joseph Abram describes some of the buildings that display the full ‘spectrum of possibilities’ of the reasoned approach in France, from the urban poetics of Patrick Berger to the typological and technological pragmatism of Jacques Ferrier. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

From the golden era of 1960s Rationalism to the present Inquietude Lucide, Joseph Abram describes the Rationalist tendencies in French architecture. Once dominated by the spectres of Le Corbusier and Auguste Perret, the rational was deeply embedded in French tectonic culture. Despite the current reassertion of the rational, the future, as Abram explains, appears less certain. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This hotel was built in 1932 at same time as the adjoining railway station. Geneva at that time boasted an urban decor whose modernist classicism epitomised the pre-war age. By 1996, the Hotel Cornavin no longer lived up to its four-star classification, nor was it compatible with the ever-increasing density of the city. The project involved reorganising the entire spatial arrangement, adding 60 rooms and a panoramic breakfast room as well as redesigning the hundred existing rooms. The stone architecture of the facades was restored and the metal skeleton of the structure extended at three levels; the new cladding was suspended from metal columns 120 mm in diameter and 12 metres high. This acrobatic scheme made it possible to endow each room, opposite the bed and the translucent glass of the bathroom, with a single glazed-in view of the urban prospect outside.

The Cret-Taconnet residential community in Neuchâtel lies to the south of the station railway yards, on the crest of a slope. It is an ensemble of roughcast covered buildings with traditional vertical windows, all alike; their dimensional profiles play off alignments and forms. Differences of mass extend and emphasise the various scales that coexist at the site. The buildings stand face to face in step-by-step succession up the slope; this last feature accentuates the effects of height or breadth and the sporadic perception of empty spaces between the structures. Three large urban windows pierce through the buildings linking the above-street level to the panoramic views below. This arrangement at once dramatises and reconciles the density of the project — so “typical of the city — and this sight of the distant lakescape and, even further off, of the Alpine skyline.

A family house with a one-car garage. A slightly sloping lot in a residential area of spruce and flower-bedecked little houses. A world where every garden is the prettiest, the most distinctive, the most personal. This house has its back to the gentle downslope of the terrain. The vertical plane of its sole facade is faced with bronze anodised aluminium, slicing into the lay of theland and transforming the lower garden into a “room” of greenery. From within, one first sees only this verdant dell its grass, its young vines, and its hedges that change colour with the seasons, but then the eye is led down to the distant outline of neighbouring rooftops and the blue of the sky. Up the slope, the original garden has been preserved, and the roof of the house lends it perspective and reinforces the feeling it gives of a lawn among pines.

The expansion plan for this school dating from the 1930s was substantial: it called for six classrooms a school kitchen and refectory, a music room, computer rooms, and numerous other features. Almost all the additional facilities were to be located in front of the original school, although at a slightly lower level, thanks to the differing planes of the two areas and to a certain amount of digging to correct a slight grade in the terrain. The extension is bullt of structural concrete panels, coloured in the mix, in a staggered or quincuncial arrangement. The glass partitions, blue-green, bright and shimmering, punctuate the concrete and underscore its presence as sheer volume while at same time diminishing the oppressiveness of its mass. Seen from the classrooms, the landscape outside is displayed at rhythmic intervals through fixed windows with silver stripping and windows designed to provide natural ventilation, with tall thin panes perforated by simple circular apertures reminiscent of soap bubbles, billiard balls, or balloons.

The library houses the collection of law books forming part of Mr Justice Fleuret’s bequest. Its interior spaces radiate from two central walls which serve as beams and in fact bear the weight of the books. The building as a whole can thus be cantilevered outwards with assistance from four walls on pilings anchored deep beneath the alluvial earth in the bedrock of the plateau. Meanwhile the solidity of thick prestressed concrete slabs encourages users to enjoy the freshness of the evening air. This is made possible by opening vertical shutters that take advantage of natural ventilation. Lastly, the use of woven copper at the same time embedded into the glass and sliding in front of the glazing serves as protection from the sun while adding a golden mask with moire highlights to the face of the building.

A study entitled “Lausanne Jardins” suggested that an existing public park be made use of during the four summer months of 2000. The site was in effect a meadow bordered by mature trees. It was proposed, in order to evoke a garden within a park, to hang exotic plants (bromeliads, orchids), by way of contrast or analogy, from the boughs of native trees. Thus a bright-red orchid dangled among the branches of a pine tree, a pale green staghorn fern was suspended from a beech, white witches’ hair decorated a plum tree and so on. This “displacement” of plants from distant climes to a familiar environment took the visitor by surprise. It embodied the allure of the unknown, of travel to distant places, and stimulated thoughts of discovery, of the naturalist-explorers of long ago. By adding colour to the greenery and dark browns of the familiar trees, it challenged the distinction between local and exotic, and in a sense improved on and “beautified” what we consider “natural”.

The most important works of Marc Joseph Saugey were executed between 1950 and 1960. For a variety of reasons the 1990s was an especially dangerous period for them. Central Station (1954) was in fact demolished, while campaigns had to be mounted to save a number of other projects that are now protected. The rehabilitation process had four stages or aspects: agitation; scientific study (the technical description and history of the buildings); development of restoration plans; and the management of the restoration itself. Thus in 1999 a detailed description and formal specifications were drawn up for the restoration of the Miremont-Le-Cret building; the exterior of the Mont-Blanc Centre complex was restored in 2004–2005 in accordance with the specifications prepared in 1996; and Cinema Manhattan (Le-Paris) was restored and transformed in 1996.

In his famous essay entitled Space, Time and Architecture, Siegfried Giedion analyses the different factors that, through the Industrial Revolution, brought about the economic, technical and intellectual conditions that made the emergence of a new architectural style possible.1 Writing about the emerging cult of machines, he mentions, as one of the forerunners, the extraordinary surge of inventions manifested in developed countries in the late 18th century. He cites all sorts of technological advances, taking care to point out that their promoters were not motivated by material gain. These inventions welled up from a much deeper source. They could not be sup-pressed or checked. Invention corresponded to an irrepressible need that was channelled into the construction of production machines, but also into the making of strange apparatuses and mechanical dolls.

Cette contribution est centrée sur l'activité égyptienne de l'architecte Auguste Perret, sur ses oeuvres édifiées ou documentées à Alexandrie, au Caire et à Héliopolis, ainsi qu'à sa postérité, en particulier à son influence sur l'oeuvre construite de Gaston Rossi.