Master's Thesis - from UTOPIA to DYSTOPIA

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Thesis Authors: Tamta Jugashvili (10566226), Aleksandre Gachechiladze (10576713) Thesis Supervisor: Giancarlo Floridi

Architecture and Urban Design | Politecnico di Milano | School of Architecture Urban Planning Construction Engineering 2020 - 2021 Academic Year

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from UTOPIA to DYSTOPIA EXPLORING DISTORTED THREEFOLD IDENTITY OF THE SILENT CITY

Transforming marginalized social housing of the former deportation camp of Cité de la Muette

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Table of Contents 01 | FORMATION OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD 1.1 | Introduction - Drancy Urban Development ........................................................................... p.11 1.2 | Suburban Housing ........................................................................................................ p.14 1.3 | Garden Cities ............................................................................................................... p.16 1.4 | Grouped Suburban Housing ........................................................................................... p.18 1.5 | Large scale Housing Estates .......................................................................................... p.20 1.6 | Demographic Profile of Drancy ....................................................................................... p.37 1.7 | Recent development ..................................................................................................... p.41 1.8 | Grand Paris Express ..................................................................................................... p.42 1.9 | Future Planned Projects around Drancy .......................................................................... p.44 1.10 | Conclusion ................................................................................................................ p.49

02 | THE SILENT CITY 2.1 | Introduction ................................................................................................................ p.53 2.2 | Architects Behind the Project ....................................................................................... p.54 2.3 | The Beginning ............................................................................................................ p.55 2.4 | The Idea of the Architectural Plan .................................................................................. p.58 2.5 | Aerial Photographs ...................................................................................................... p.62 2.6 | The Innovative Construction System ...............................................................................p.64 2.7 | The “Comb” Plan ............................................................................................................ p.68 2.8 | Media Coverage .......................................................................................................... p.71 2.9 | Economic Crisis .......................................................................................................... p.74 2.10 | War and Memory ........................................................................................................ p.74 2.11 | Still a Place of Memory ................................................................................................ p.77 2.12 | Demolition of Towers ................................................................................................... p.78 2.13 | Muette as a Cultural Heritage ....................................................................................... p.81 2.14 | Cité de la Muette Now ................................................................................................. p.85

03 | THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

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Introduction ................................................................................................................ Trigger images ............................................................................................................ Archetypes ................................................................................................................. Poetic Image ...............................................................................................................

p.88 p.90 p.92 p.94


04 | PROJECT 4.1 | Introduction ............................................................................................................... p.99 4.2 | Rethinking the Courtyard ................................................................................................p.100 4.3 | New Program ............................................................................................................... p.102 4.4 | Jardin à la française ....................................................................................................... p.109 4.5 | Context Plan .............................................................................................................. p.110 4.6 | New Apartment Typologies .............................................................................................. p.119 4.7 | Library ..................................................................................................................... p.123 4.8 | Gallery ..................................................................................................................... p.135 4.9 | Garden ..................................................................................................................... p.145 4.10 | Food Court .................................................................................................................... p.153 4.11 | Memorial ................................................................................................................... p.161 Bibliography..................................................................................................................................... p.168 List of Drawings ....................................................................................................................... p.169 List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... p.170

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ABSTRACT

FROM UTOPIA TO DYSTOPIA

EXPLORING DISTORTED THREEFOLD IDENTITY OF THE SILENT CITY – Transforming marginalized social housing of the former deportation camp of Cité de la Muette Conceived as an innovative social housing project in the northern banlieue of Paris, Cité de la Muette (The Silent City) constitutes an important landmark in the history of early twentieth-century modernist architecture. Nevertheless, this ambitious social housing project, aimed at social and housing reform, has fulfilled little of its promise. Shortly after its completion, the project of the first Parisian innovative skyscrapers was transformed into an internment camp and deportation center during WWII. In 2001 the place was put on the National Heritage list of France, but surprisingly, the cité never ceased to function as social housing, and it is still a place where five hundred residents currently reside. The Cité de la Muette, therefore, braces a threefold identity: a lieu d’histoire (a place of history) associated with the twentieth-century modernist architecture; a lieu de mémoire (a place of memory) of Holocaust-era deportation camp; and a lieu de vie (a place of life) for present-day residents. Seemingly distinct, these three elements intertwine and intersect. With an emphasis on the concept of multidirectional memory, the thesis is conceived to deal with convoluted stories of architecture, the atrocious past, and everyday life. The principal objective of the thesis is to come up with the solution on how to accommodate multiple narratives and foster dialog between difficult histories that carry critical social and political implications for the present and future and to explore the potential of the site by analyzing its experimental and innovative architectural past, its current function and its future context.

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DALL’UTOPIA ALLA DISTOPIA

ESPLORANDO LA TRIPLICE IDENTITÀ DISTORTA DELLA CITTÀ SILENZIOSA - Trasformare l’edilizia sociale emarginata dell’ex campo di espulsione di Cité de la Muette Concepito come un innovativo progetto di edilizia sociale nella banlieue settentrionale di Parigi, Cité de la Muette (La città silenziosa) costituisce un importante punto di riferimento nella storia dell’architettura modernista del primo Novecento. Tuttavia, questo ambizioso progetto, finalizzato alla riforma sociale e abitativa, ha mantenuto ben poco delle sue promesse. Poco dopo il suo completamento, il progetto dei primi grattacieli innovativi parigini fu trasformato in un campo di internamento e centro di deportazione durante la seconda guerra mondiale. Nel 2001 il luogo è stato inserito nella lista del Patrimonio Nazionale della Francia, ma sorprendentemente, la cité non ha mai smesso di funzionare come edilizia sociale, ed è ancora un luogo abitato da cinquecento residenti. La Cité de la Muette, quindi, racchiude una triplice identità: un lieu d’histoire (un luogo della storia) associato all’architettura modernista del XX secolo; un lieu de mémoire (un luogo della memoria) del campo di deportazione dell’era dell’Olocausto; e un lieu de vie (un luogo di vita) per i residenti di oggi. Apparentemente distinti, questi tre elementi si intrecciano e si intersecano. Con un’enfasi sul concetto di memoria multidirezionale, la tesi è concepita per affrontare storie contorte di architettura, atroce passato e vita quotidiana. L’obiettivo principale della tesi è quello di trovare una soluzione su come accogliere più narrazioni e favorire il dialogo tra storie difficili che portano implicazioni sociali e politiche per il presente e per il futuro e di esplorare le potenzialità del sito analizzando il suo passato architettonico sperimentale e innovativo, la sua funzione attuale e il suo contesto futuro

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01

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FORMATION OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD


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Cité de la Muette

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1.1 | Introduction - Drancy Urban Development Drancy is one of the northeastern Parisian banlieaus (suburbs) located in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis. Today Drancy is the department’s fifth largest commune, with a population of over sixty-six thousand. At the site of current commune used to be a small village which originated not far from the current crossroads of rue Anatole France and rue Sadi Carnot. Fig.1 In the beginning of XIX century habitat was still oriented towards agricultural activities which were developing due to the high demand from Paris and improvement of road Networks. Fig.2; Fig.3

Fig. 1 - 1905-1955 view from Drancy and Bobigny Source: Departmental Archives of Seine-Saint-Denis; author F. Devillechabrolle,

Drastic changes and the urbanization of agricultural land began with the arrival of the railway and the commissioning in 1858 of the Paris - Soissons line, then of the Grande Ceinture in 1882. Although Industrial activities caused by the railway originate in the district Plaine Saint Denis and Drancy neighborhood remained predominantly as a residential area, it was effected by trends of industrialization and urbanization. (Fig.4; Fig.5) In 1900s working class migration, and lack of available housing in the central Paris led to parceling of agricultural lends and rapid developments in the suburbs. So cold lotissements (parcels) lacked basic infrastructure, housing had poor quality. In the 1920s the suburbs surrounding Paris received status of the “banlieues rouges” (red suburbs). Concentration of working class population with law income and leftist political views led to marginalisation of the neighborhood from political elites.

Fig. 1 - 1905-1955 view from Drancy and Bobigny Source: Departmental Archives of Seine-Saint-Denis; author F. Devillechabrolle,

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Fig. 2 - Map of the surroundings of Paris by Abbé Delagrive, 1731-1741 Source: www.apur.org

Fig. 3 - Plan Lefèvre, 1855-1861 Source: www.apur.org

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Fig. 4 - map known as type 1900, 1906 Source: www.apur.org

Fig. 5 - Topographic map, known as type 1922, 1924-1947 Source: www.apur.org

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1.2 | Suburban Housing The vast majority of this type of urban fabric in Drancy came from housing estate operations at the end of the 19th century, which affected all areas of the city. However as in the first part of 20th century Drancy population have increased rapidly from 1247 inhabitants in 1901 to 4190 in 1911 to reach 15,582 inhabitants in 1921 and up to 51,156 inhabitants in 1931. Which resulted in a wave of new constructions in the neighborhood. This massive urbanization was a result of the desire of the Parisian workforce to get closer to the factories in the Plaine Saint Denis. The plots of new housing were arranged along the network of regular, orthogonal grid of streets. Street networks lacked hierarchy and resulted in a homogeneous urban tissue. Average plot with a size of 300 m² had a narrow and elongated shape. Plots located closer to the railway were slightly larger (between 400 and 600 m² on average).

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Suburban Houses Late XIX Century

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1.3 | Garden Cities Population growth, rapid urbanization, workers unrest, chaotic urban sprawl and lack of adequate housing was addressed by reformers with an Idea to develop cité-jardin (Garden Cities). First Cité Jardin in Drancy was built in 1921 and extended from 1929 by the Cité Paul Bert. “That French garden city projects unfolded mainly in the suburbs is no coincidence. Such initiatives were conceptualized as experiments in social control as much as social reform. Reformers’ contention that a living environment could shape behavior, instill values, and create a contented, obedient, and productive working class was put into practice through worker housing schemes like suburban cité-jardins. Notably, early twentieth-century social experiments with housing in suburbs echoed experiments in architecture and urbanism beginning around the same time in French colonies. Contemporary reformers themselves drew parallels between the colonies and the suburbs, characterizing both as potentially volatile, in need of civilizing, and promising laboratories for social reform. Like France’s colonies, the Parisian suburbs became marginalized spaces inhabited by the other as well as a “banc d’essai des modernites” (test bed of modernity) for social cohesion and social control experiments. Social housing projects, including ordinary cités-jardins and the more radical Cite de la Muette, were integral to such experimentation.” Alise Hansen

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Fig. 6 - Cité Jardins De Drancy Source: Archive Seine Saint Denis Atlas de L’Architecture et du Patrimoine


Fig. 7-8 - Garden City of Drancy Source: Archive Seine Saint Denis Atlas de L’Architecture et du Patrimoine

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Fig. 9 - Bird eye view on the suburbun housing of Drancy Source: Google Maps

1.4 | Grouped Suburban Housing Another suburban typology which appeared in Drancy in 1950s is group of detached and semi detached houses which are arranged across well organised street networks. This urban morphology strongly resembles suburban houses popular in USA in 20th century with its dead end streets and roundabouts which were adopted to improve accessibility with a car. “Beaver houses” built around the rue du Commandant Louis Bouchet are one of the examples of this urban typology. According to the resent revision document of Local Urban Plan of Drancy there have been a trend of dividing houses into several dwellings, transforming house extensions into separate housing and informal densifications of plots. What results in problems of habitability, poor integration into the environment and deterioration of the living environment. According to a quantitative study carried out by Cerema / Espacité, Drancy is the second most concerned by the suburban division in the department of Seine-Saint-Denis. It is estimated that between 2003 and 2013, 140 single faimily homes were divided.

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Subutban Houses Late XIX Century Cité Jardin in Drancy built in 1921 extended to the Cité Paul Bert in 1929 Suburban Housing built in 1950s

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Fig. 10 - Cité de la Muette Skyscrapers Source: Archive Seine Saint Denis Atlas de L’Architecture et du Patrimoine

1.5 | Large scale Housing Estates As first response to population growth and unordered urbanization was addressed with Garden Cities by the government authorities, second wave followed by the first large scale estates. The forerunner of this initiative was Cité de la Muette built in 1931, which offered 950 collective housing units. “The Cité de la Muette (The Silent City) represented an inovative landmark in the history of early twentieth-century urban planning and architecture.” “First appeared in the historical record in 1929 when Henri Sellier, socialist politician and president of the Office Public des Habitations à Bon Marché du Département de la Seine (OPHBM, the departmental housing office), commissioned architects Lods and Beaudoin to design a new cité-jardin that would extend Drancy’s first cité-jardin, which had been constructed in 1922.

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However, plans for a collection of picturesque pavillons derived from English reformer Ebenezer Howard’s garden city urban planning model were abandoned in favor of something more “revolutionary”: a large-scale modernist complex of concrete tours (towers) and barres (low-rise buildings) intended for collective habitation. The resultant Cité de la Muette was thus the product of both the garden city tradition and the modern movement. While some contemporaries disparaged Lods and Beaudoin’s radical design and rationalized approach, many celebrated these “first skyscrapers in the Parisian region,” praised the apartments’ domestic amenities, and lauded the architects’ construction technologies as revolutionary. Designed and promoted as one of the most advanced urban planning projects of the inter-war period, the Cité de la Muette fulfilled little of its promise before World War II.” Alise Hansen


Fig. 11 - Nazi Deportation camp at the Cité de la Muette Source: Archive Seine Saint Denis Atlas de L’Architecture et du Patrimoine

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After the Second World War, many realizations of collective housing complexes emerged in different parts of the Neighborhood.

Respond of the city was redevelopment of existing ansambles and garden cities and launching new projects.

Large estates, cities and residences built mainly before 1980

The city center rebuilt between 1980 and 2000

In the early 1950s, the city of Drancy set up a Public HLM Office, with the aim of to organize urban growth, and have launched a series of large-scale operations: Cité Paul Vaillant Couturier, cited Gaston Roulaud, cited Paul Eluard and Danièle Casanova, produced by Marcel Lods. The architect Roger Gilbert was assigned to the city Youri Gagarin, the city Marcel Cachin and the city Jules Auffret. The Cité de l’Abreuvoir, on the edge of Bobigny, was built by Aillaud.

The collective fabric of the city center extends over nearly 7 hectares, opposite the Parc de Ladoucette. Between 1980 and 2000 the fabric of the historic center and part of the garden city has been completely redesigned, as part of a ZAC.

These collective housing sectors present morphological characteristics typical of the town planning of the 60s: towers and slabs set up in free plan on plots of large size, unrelated to the tracks, and accompanied by large planted spaces or areas of parking. Some facilities are built directly in the heart of the most important urban fabrics. As the quality and livability of some of these areas was very poor, the city of Drancy has launched a major urban renewal program. As part of the ANRU1 agreement signed in 2008, certain large groups have been the subject of important recomposition. This is particularly the case of the Jules Auffret, Pierre Sémard, city of North and Thai city. Others have been affected by residentialization and rehabilitation work, which made it possible to re-qualify the living environment of the inhabitants, without major intervention. Some neighborhoods, which still concentrate social difficulties and urban dysfunctions, are concerned by the new priority geography of the city, and as such may be the subject of projects in the upcoming years. Social housing is the majority in these neighborhoods, but some condominiums exist as well. “The marginalization of “la banlieue” and its grands ensembles has increased since the late 1980s, and the early 1990s saw a “moral panic” emerge in the media and politics that placed the banlieues at the center of French debates and discourses on a host of explosive issues: immigration, racism, geographic isolation, economic exclusion, citizenship, national identity, colonialism, and postcolonialism.” Alise Hansen

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The development of the new city center was inspired by the urban qualities of the garden city in working on continuity with the existing urban fabric and paying particular attention to interior paths, alleys, plots, as well as green spaces while offering a strong density with the construction of tall and massive buildings (R + 3 to R + 7). Residences built between 1980 and 2000 In the years 1980 to 2000, two small operations were created, in parallel with the realization of the ZAC Center-Ville. This concerns the construction in 1992 of the Résidence le Petit Drancy (162 housing), followed in 2000 by the construction of the Cité Gide (140 housing units). These operations stand out from the large ensembles of the 1960s by returning to a smaller frame scale (R + 4/5 maximum) and by the choice of layout in alignment. They keep in on the other hand, there are large common areas. Continuous collective housing built mainly since the 2000s The collective housing fabric of the 2000s extends the reconstructed city center. Were thus formed dense and continuous urban fronts, especially along rue Sadi Carnot and facing the Pointe du recomposed center. The implantation can be in alignment as if in slight withdrawal. The architecture is essentially neoclassical, but we find also some achievements of contemporary style. This fabric is characterized by a hold at the substantial floor, which leaves little room for common areas. Some sectors, such as the area around the Drancy RER station, are also characterized by a “urban front” type fabric sometimes formed before the 2000s.


Large estates, cities or residences built before 1980 Residences built between 1980 and 2000 copy Collective housing mainly built since the 2000s Large complexes having undergone a major requalification in the years 2010 copy

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Large complexes that have undergone major requalification in the 2010s The Cité du Nord and the neighboring Thai city are the two large social housing complexes of the district of Paris Countryside. They are located near a curve formed by the SNCF railways, and constitute by elsewhere, the western entrance to Drancy on the axis leading to the city center (the RD 30). These large complexes concentrated many social, economic, activities and thus emerged as priority sectors for public intervention. Since 2010, the Cité du Nord and the Cité Thaïs have been the subject of an ambitious urban renovation program, which has made it possible to fundamentally change the image of the neighborhood and improve inhabitants. The urban renewal of the district, which ended in 2016, mainly focused on actions to requalify public spaces and strengthen the supply of equipment. One of the major changes was the opening of the district, which suffered from a certain isolation of by its position in relation to the railway tracks. The project made it possible to create new access points and break up the residential fronts located to the west and east of the district. In addition to the operations carried out by the City, the district’s social landlord, ICF La Sablière, is intervened on its heritage of the Cité du Nord and the Cité Thaïs (around 800 housing units in total) thanks to the following operations: - The demolition of a building with 47 housing units, - The reconstruction of 38 collective social housing in the west of the district, the rest of the replenishment of the offer being provided off-site, - The residentialization by block of the Cité du Nord and the Cité Thaïs, in order to differentiate public and private spaces, - The rehabilitation of 667 housing units in the Cité du Nord. Today cities or residences, punctuate the suburban fabric of Drancy. A varied collective housing fabric covers approximately 98 hectares (including roads), or 12.6% of the territory.

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Subutban Houses Late XIX Century Cité Jardin in Drancy built in 1921 extended to the Cité Paul Bert in 1929 Suburban Housing built in 1950s Large estates, cities or residences built before 1980 Residences built between 1980 and 2000 copy Collective housing mainly built since the 2000s Large complexes having undergone a major requalification in the years 2010 copy

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Fig. 12 - Cité de la Muette, the great courtyard (La Muette) Built in 1931-1934

Fig. 13 - Residence des Erables (La Muette) Built at the end of the 1950s

The U-shaped building is the last preserved element of what is considered to be the first large complex in the Paris region. The whole, designed by the architects Eugène Beaudouin and Marcel Lods, according to the principles of prefabrication, consisted of at the origin of 6 main buildings. The architects have built 1000 homes on behalf of the OPHBM of the Seine. After various occupations military, this set was used between 1941 and 1944 by the German army as internment camp, main place of departure from France to the camps of Nazi extermination. The towers and combs were destroyed in 1976. Today the U-shaped building, which brings together 360 housing units on 5 levels, is classified historical monument. The city of la Muette is concerned by the “new priority neighborhoods” scheme from the city “. The Liberation square and the city of la Muette were rehabilitated under the ANRU1.

This residence consists of 8 buildings, including two bars of great length.

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Fig. 14 - The Square de la Liberation residence (La Muette) Built in 1955-1956 This residence is an extension of the Cité de la Muette. It was carried out on behalf of the OPH of Drancy. Architects Marcel Lods and André Malizard, already creators of the U-shaped building of the city of la Muette, designed this set of 98 housing units distributed across two bars of 4 floors located on the from the intersection of avenue Jean Jaurès and rue Arthur Fontaine. The residence is affected by the “new priority areas of the city” system.

Fig. 15 - La caserne de gendarmerie mobile de Drancy (La Muette) Built in 1976-1980 The barracks were built, after the demolition of the towers and 3-storey buildings in the city of la Muette. The Ministry of Defense erected this complex to house the gendarmes and their families. The set is made up of modules of various heights up to 14 floors.

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Fig. 16 - The Thaïs city Built in 1950 and 1953

Fig. 17 - Cité de l’abreuvoir (Village Parisien) Built in 1954-1958

The Thaïs city was designed by the architect of the Railway Company from the pre-war North, Jean Philippot, still on behalf of La Sablière - HLM subsidiary of SNCF, in order to replace the old workers’ city demolished during the post-war period.

The city of l’Abreuvoir is located for the most part in the town of Bobigny. Some buildings are located in the town of Drancy, at street level Amsterdam and Budapest Street. The overall complex is made up of 1,500 housing units, built in the 60s. Designed by Émile Aillaud and J. Vèdres, it is characterized by the curved shape of the buildings which are located around a central mall and by the polychromy of the facades. The buildings are currently managed by the OPH of Seine-Saint-Denis.

The architectural style is typical of the years of post-war reconstruction with a stone facade characterized by a play on the materials. The constraints of the site are at the origin of the isolated character of this set divided into two parts different by the railways: a part located around the rue de la Butte (residence of the Butte), which brings together 68 housing units across four 4-storey buildings, and the other part located in extension of the Cité du Nord, which brings together 254 housing units spread across nine buildings with between 2 and 4 storeys high. In total, the complex includes 322 housing units across thirteen buildings.

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Fig. 18 - Cité Paul Vaillant Couturier (Drancy Center) Built in 1957-1958

Fig. 19 - Cité Gaston Roulaud (Petit Drancy) Built in 1959 and 1962

The Cité Paul Vaillant Couturier facing the historic center, was designed by Marcel Lods and André Malizard on behalf of the OPH of Drancy. It brings together 403 housing divided into two bars of 8 floors and two of 12 floors. The buildings of this large complex are made according to the typical architectural style of Lods, with exterior facade made of concrete panels graveled with flint. This city stands out for its high quality of its outdoor spaces.

The city of Gaston Roulaud (formerly Roger Salengro) is one of the major complexes of Le Petit Drancy district, bordering Bobigny. Designed by architects Marcel Lods, André Malizard and Alain Rivière, authors of several large groups on the territory. This large complex, of nearly 8 hectares, includes 803 housing units distributed in four bars (two of 8 floors and two others of 10 floors) and a tower of 17 floors, located around a large park. The buildings were constructed of flint gravel concrete panels covering the exterior facade of buildings. This architecture characterizes all Lods achievements over the city. The city Gaston Roulaud today shows significant signs of dilapidation, in particular in terms of thermal and acoustic insulation. There is a strong vacancy of housing. The city is one of the “new priority districts of the city” and is concerned in part of a PRU2 by a major urban renewal project.

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Fig. 20 - Cité Gargarine (Avenir Parisien) Built in 1962-1963

Fig. 21 - Cité Resistance (Avenir Parisien) Built in 1967

The Gagarin city is one of the three large social housing complexes in the district L’Avenir Parisien, bordering Bobigny and La Courneuve, and strategically located in relation to the GPE station projects.

Like the Gargarine city that it extends, the Resistance city was designed by Roger Gilbert on behalf of the OPH of Drancy. It has 356 housing units distributed across two bars of 4 floors and three bars of 10 floors. In 2015-2016, the buildings of this city were rehabilitated.

Architect Roger Gilbert. Built on behalf of the OPH of Drancy. It consists of a tower of 14 floors, four bars of 10 floors and eight bars of 4 floors, for a total of 568 housing. This city was the subject of a major rehabilitation in 1992.

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Fig. 22 - Cité Cachin (Village Parisien) Built in 1968

Fig. 23 - Cité Jean Lurçat (Avenir Parisien) Built in 1968-1969

The Cité Marcel Cachin, designed by architect Roger Gilbert. It includes 484 housing units distributed across 5 towers of 14 floors and a bar of 5 floors. The Cité Cachin, managed by the OPH Drancy, was the subject, within the framework of the ANRU1, of rehabilitation of towers and residentialization. This city is located in the continuity of neighboring Jules Auffret district, which was deeply recomposed as part of the Urban Renovation Program. The Cité Marcel Cachin is concerned by the“new priority neighborhoods in the city “.

The Cité Jean Lurçat is the third large social housing complex built by the architect Roger Gilbert in the Drancéen district of L’Avenir Parisien, its buildings adopt the same exterior facades. It is consists of five bars: one of 8 floors and four others of 4 floors. The city made the subject of a major rehabilitation in 1992. More recently, the whole was residentialized.

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Fig. 24 - Cité Paul Eluard (Petit Drancy) Built in 1967-1970

Fig. 25 - Fernand Péna Tower (Petit Drancy) Built in 1967-1970

The Cité Paul Éluard was designed by Marcel Lods, as well as his collaborators André Malizard, Marc Alexandre and Alain Rivière. This set, which is deploys on both sides of the rue Roger Salengro, marks the entrance to Drancy by coming of the prefecture of Seine-Saint-Denis. It includes three buildings of varying sizes: a 15-storey tower, as well as that two bars having respectively 6 and 13 floors.

The Fernand Péna Tower was designed by the architects Marcel Lods, André Malizard, Marc Alexandre and Alain Rivière on behalf of the OPHLM of Drancy.

Here again, the buildings are characterized by their construction in concrete panels, but only a part of these panels are graveled with flint. The city has been rehabilitated heavily in 1994. The city is integrated into the “new priority areas of the city ”.

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With its 17 floors, it is one of the tallest buildings in the Petit district Drancy. It faces the city Gaston Roulaud, of which it shares the same architectural elements. The plot has been residentialized.


Fig. 26 - Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende towers (Drancy Center) Built 1970-1972 Two twin towers were built facing the bars of the Cité Paul-Vaillant-Couturier. With their 19 floors, they are the most tall buildings of the city of Drancy and as such landmarks in the cityscape. These two towers were designed by architects Marcel Lods and Alain Rivière.

Fig. 27 - Residence Danielle Casanova (Petit Drancy) Built in 1970-1972 The Danielle Casanova residence was built designed by the architects Marcel Lods and Alain Rivière. It is located on avenue Henri Barbusse in position entrance to town. It brings together 130 housing units distributed across three buildings having respectively 5, 8 and 10 floors, which are again characterized by their construction in concrete panels, part of which is graveled with flint.

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Fig. 28 - Cité du Nord Built in 1966-1975

Fig. 29 - Residence les Coquelicots (Les Oiseaux) Built in 1975

La Cité du Nord was built on behalf of La Sablière - HLM subsidiary of the SNCF, instead of a workers’ city of the SCNF. At the time, it had 18 towers of 4 to 10 floors housing a total of 684 housing units, including a large majority of social housing.

This 11-storey building includes 107 housing units spread over two adjoining buildings. The residence was rehabilitated between 2001 and 2002, then residentialized in 2007.

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Fig. 30 - The Max Jacob residence (La Muette) Built in 1974-1977

Fig. 31 - The residence Le Vénus (La Muette) Built in 1977

Architects Jean and Maria Deroche. It brings together 40 apartments spread over 2 floors.

This is an eight-storey building, on rue Daniel Féry . It is located in the middle of a residentialized plot. The building is in good general condition.

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Fig. 32 - The residence of the Angelus (La Muette) Built in 1978-1980 This residence brings together four bars, each of 4 floors.

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Fig. 33 - Residence Diderot (Petit Drancy) The Diderot residence is made up of 3 R + 5 bars, representing 120 accommodation units. She is locates near the A86, along a covered stretch. This set, residentialized in 2006, had significant open spaces.


1.6 | Demographic Profile of Drancy The population of Drancy is relatively young. The rate of people aged over 60 (17%) is indeed lower than the national rate (21.6%). 1.2.1 | Population Growth Trend Since 1982, Drancy has experienced a population increase which accelerated in the 1990s. 1982 and 1999, the population rose from 60,183 to 62,263 inhabitants, an increase of 3.45%. In 2013, the municipal population reached 68,241 inhabitants, which represents an increase of 9.6% compared to 1999. In 2018, the municipality had 72,109 inhabitants, an increase of 5.67% compared to 2013. 1.2.2 | Age of the Population Between 2008 and 2013, the age groups which are increasing are those of 0-14 years, 15-29 years, 30-44 year olds and that of 60-74 year olds, with a greater increase in the 0-14 year old class. The age groups from 45 to 59 and 75 and over have declined significantly. The increase in the 0-14 age group is not new, it already took place between 1999 and 2006 and is due to the high birth rate. On the other hand, there is a reversal of the trends concerning the other age groups: between 1999 and 2006, people aged 15 to 44 and 60 to 74 decreased slightly and the people aged 45 to 59 and 75 and over are increasing slowly.

Fig. 34 - La Gare Le Bourget Drancy Source: www.alamy.com - Stock photos

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Graph. 1 - Demographic Evolution of Drancy through the Years Source: Cassini l’EHHESS

Graph. 2 - Job Industry Statistics Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020

Graph. 3 - Education Statistics Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020

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Graph. 4 - Capacity of Hotels and Collective Accommodation Statistics in Drancy Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020

1.2.3 | Households Households in couples with children remain the most represented among households living in Drancy by 2013. This family model is on the rise, is more than 614 households between 2008 and 2013. More particularly, it is the number of families with one, two or three children that have significantly increases. The number of families with four or more children has significantly decreased. 1.2.3 | Education Profile It is from the age group 18-24 that the gap of education widens between Drancy, the department and the metropolitan area: The enrollment rate in Drancy is in fact 49.0% compared to 52.2% for the department and 58.6% for the Metropolis. Dropping out of school in the 15-17 age group would be one of the factors explaining the low level of qualification of students: in fact, 67.5% of the population has a level of education below the baccalaureate compared to less than

59.4% for the population of Seine-Saint-Denis and 47.6% for Metropolitan France. Over the period 2000-2013, we nevertheless observe an increase in the level of qualification of Drancéens: over the whole of the out-of-school population, the proportion of individuals with the highest qualification, a higher education diploma, has significantly increased. The share of people with at most a CAP or BEP and the share of people with a baccalaureate also increased, a trend which was more marked for the latter. Although the level of qualification of Drancéens is increasing, it remains however lower than that of the population of Seine-Saint-Denis and the population of the Metropolis. Among the unschooled population, the proportion of individuals with no diploma or at most a BEPC, a college diploma or a DNB is much higher in Drancy. It is 46.7% for the municipality, 41.3% for the department and 31.5% for the Metropolis. The share of people with higher education qualifications is much lower for the municipality compared to the department and the Metropolis, i.e. 16.6%, 23.5% and 35.8%.

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Graph. 5 - Employment Statistics in Drancy Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020

1.2.3 | Job Industry Generally speaking, the socio-professional category most represented in Drancy in 2013 was the employee category. Employees represent 23% of the population aged 15 and over. This category is followed by retirees who represent 20% and workers who make up 17% of the Drancean population aged 15 or over. The category of craftsmen, traders and entrepreneurs, and that of executives and senior intellectual professions are poorly represented. They amount respectively to 4 and 5%. Finally, there are differences in the representation of socio-professional categories according to the gender of the population: In fact, there is an under-representation of the artisans, traders and entrepreneurs category among women, as well as an over-representation of employees. 1.2.4 | Sum Up of the Demographic Research According to the demographic research the neighborhood is

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mostly populated by young families. The population growth is a trend and, considering the new planned infrastructural developments, will continue so. There is a high number of African and Asian immigrants present in the neighbourhood and a significant concentration of Oriental and African markets. The number of people with higher education qualifications is much lower for the municipality compared to the department and the Metropolis. Based on economic research, there is only one hotel in Drancy, even though the area has significant number of historical monuments, there are no places to stay, which significantly contributes to the undevelopped commercial streets and unsafe touristic environment The crime rate is one of the highest compared to other Paris areas and to the national average.


1.7 | Recent development Since the 2000s, the development of the municipality has been almost exclusively driven by a dynamic of urban renewal, unbuilt spaces becoming increasingly rare. Two types of sectors were the focus of urban change, and therefore new construction: * The large collective housing complexes, dating from the years 1940 to 1970, which present many urban dysfunctions and concentrate social difficulties. The cities of Pierre Sémard and Jules Auffret have thus been the subject of a major restructuring, with numerous demolitions-reconstructions, as part of a Project of Urban Renovation (PRU). Other districts, still within the framework of PRU, were re-qualified, while partly maintaining the existing buildings. It is for example the case of the cities of the North and Thaïs. * The main traffic axes, made up of a very heterogeneous fabric, under-densified compared to their potential. The departmental roads RD30, RD115 as well as the axes located in the direct periphery downtown, such as rue Marcelin Berthelot in particular, are affected by one-off renewal operations, with the construction of apartment buildings replacing suburban or village housing, and sometimes activities. * Certain industries departed from the surrounding of railway territory in the 2000s. Which led to several new projects along the railway line: the construction of an inter-communal technical center, development of a reception area for people from trip as well as the realization of a grouped operation of 20 individual houses. A large industrial wasteland appeared in the 2000s along the tracks railroads. The recent departure of the Saint-Gobain company, whose site was located north of the Avenir district Parisien, has also generated a new economic wasteland, near the RER station Le Bourget. Apart from urban developments, the 2000s were marked by the redevelopment of the Place de l’Hotel de Ville, and its opening by the rue Charles de Gaulle, thus allowing a easier crossing of the city center for motorists and better service by public transport.

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1.8 | Grand Paris Express Grand Paris is a large-scale project that implies the establishment of an urban transport network: the Grand Paris Express. It involves the creation of four new metro lines, which will be connected to the existing network on an underground route. The main objective is to link the territories of Greater Paris together and make it possible to reach the center of the capital more quickly. This should make it possible to open up certain towns and facilitate access to employment, culture, training and also leisure activities for Parisians. As a result, Greater Paris is also an ambitious urban development project. The neighborhoods around the future stations will benefit from the development operations, the creation of commerce, offices and housing. Grand Paris is the creation of a new administrative entity: the Metropolis of Grand Paris (MGP). It brings together 130 communes of Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-deMarne, Essonne and Val d’Oise. Its purpose is to meet the challenge of “economic, social and cultural development and planning, environmental protection and international attractiveness”. Thus, many innovative urban projects are emerging and reinforce the attractiveness of the metropolis, in particular in view of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Paris 2024. In addition, the creation of new housing is a major objective of the Greater Paris project. The ambition set by the State is to deliver 70,000 new homes per year to fight against the housing crisis that is impacting Île-de-France. As part of the “Grand Paris”, it is also envisioned to build the Drancy-Bobigny station. Located in the south-west of the town of Drancy, it will be interconnected with the existing T1 tram line and the future T11 Express station. The new station will connect Drancy to the center of Paris and to its surroundings, making it more accessible and attractive for future investors and residents. Thus, we believe that the transformation of the Cité de la Muette will have a positive impact on the future of commune of Drancy.

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R

Versailles C

18

Satory

Saint-Quentin Est


Le Mesnil-Amelot Aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle T4

17 Aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle T2

Triangle de Gonesse

Parc des Expositions

17 Aéroport Charles-de-Gaulle T2

Colombes

La Courneuve Six Routes

Les Grésillon

16 17

Aulnay

Sevran − Livry

Le Bourget RER

Saint-Denis Pleyel Stade de France Drancy − Bobigny Mairie d’Aubervilliers

La Garenne Colombes

Les Agnettes Les Grésillons Bois-Colombes Mairie de Saint-Ouen

Nanterre La Folie

15

Bécon-les-Bruyères

Fort d’Aubervilliers

Saint-Ouen RER

15

Bobigny Pablo-Picasso

Pont Cardinet

Nanterre La Boule

Clichy − Montfermeil

Pont de Bondy Bondy

Porte de Clichy La Défense

Rueil

Sevran Beaudottes

16

Le Blanc-Mesnil

14 Saint-Lazare

Rueil − Suresnes Mont Valérien

Nogent − Le Perreux

Châtelet

Pont de Sèvres

15

15

Gare de Lyon Champigny Centre

Noisy − Champs Bry − Villiers − Champigny

Issy RER Olympiades

15

Champigny Centre

Fort d’Issy − Vanves − Clamart Châtillon − Montrouge

Kremlin-Bicêtre Hôpital

Saint-Maur − Créteil

14

Bagneux Arcueil − Cachan Villejuif Institut Gustave-Roussy

Chantiers

Chelles

Champigny Centre

Champigny Centre

Saint-Cloud

16

Rosny Bois-Perrier Val de Fontenay

Vitry Centre

15

Villejuif Louis-Aragon

Créteil l’Échat Le Vert de Maisons

Les Ardoines Chevilly "Trois Communes" M.I.N Porte de Thiais

18 CEA Saint-Aubin

Antonypôle Massy Opéra Massy − Palaiseau

18 Orsay − Gif

Pont de Rungis

Aéroport d’Orly

Palaiseau

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1.9 | Future Planned Projects around Drancy The following information concerning the future planned urban developments in and around Drancy municipality is taken from L’Institut Paris Region website. 1. Îlot du Marché : Mixed housing / activities Surface of the land : 1.18 ha demolition of existing buildings, construction of approximately 290 housing units and 8,000 m² of retail space. 2. Secteur de la Molette : 1,700 diversified housing units (including 800 by the end of the PLU), and, in the southern part of the sector, up to 10,000 m² of activities, 4,000 m² of shops, restoration of the Eiffel hall (facilities planned), a green space in the Bardini block and a school. 3. Airport entrance : Mixed housing / activities Surface of the land : 6.94 ha Development of a mixed housing / tertiary district to the south of the intersection, the creation of homogeneous public spaces. On the airport side, creation of new leisure, hotel and commercial spaces (densification potential estimated at between 100,000 and 150,000 m²

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4) Olympic Games 2024 : ZAC “Media Cluster” : Infrastructure Land surface : 66.81 ha The ZAC will host, for the duration of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the media village (4,000 rooms) near the main media center (in hall 3 of the PEX) where 20,000 journalists will work, and the volleyball and shooting competitions (temporary facilities). The media village in Dugny will be converted into a neighborhood of 1,300 housing units, including public facilities (school, gymnasium, day care center) as well as shops and services on approximately 1,000 m². An economic activity zone of 20,000 m² will be created at La Comète. South of the A1, redevelopment of the Bourget sports park and schools. New crossing on the A1. Expansion of Georges Valbon Park by 13 hectares (the “essences” sites). 5. Grande Gare district : Mixed housing / activities Land surface : 8.15 ha Project to redevelop the district in connection with the redevelopment of the “Bourget RER” interchange (arrival of the Tangentielle Nord in 2017, and lines 16 and 17 of the Grand Paris Express by 2023-2024). Two operational sectors: the station sector, at the entrance to the city, with a mixed program (tertiary sector, services and shops on the Avenue de la Division Leclerc, and diversified housing), and the Bienvenue sector for residential use. OAP sector in the 2016 PLU. 6. Grande Gare district : Mixed housing / activities Land surface : 8.15 ha Project to redevelop the district in connection with the redevelopment of the “Bourget RER” interchange (arrival of the Tangentielle Nord in 2017, and lines 16 and 17 of the Grand Paris Express by 2023-2024). Two operational sectors: the station sector, at the entrance to the city, with a mixed program (tertiary sector, services and shops on the Avenue de la Division Leclerc, and diversified housing), and the Bienvenue sector for residential use. OAP sector in the 2016 PLU. 7. Le Baillet : Mixed housing / activities Land surface : 9.10 ha Project of requalification of an industrial wasteland along the railroad tracks near the Bourget station. Land acquired by the commune in 2009 from the SNCF. Mixed programming envisaged: approximately 750 collective housing units (includ-

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ing a hundred social housing units), 8,000 m² of shops and services, facilities (a 5,000 m² cultural center, a school and a daycare center), and public spaces 8. Gaston Roulaud City : Housing Surface of the land : 12.89 ha The project provides for a densification of housing (demolition of 700 dwellings, conservation of the 103 dwellings of Tower E, construction of 900 dwellings, 33% of which are social housing), a reinforcement of the supply of public facilities (conservatory, gymnasium, day care center, associative premises), of the commercial offer (rue Salengro) and of activities (crafts and tertiary sector on the south-western islet), and the creation of a park in the heart of the district. 9. DELM Leblanc sector: Mixed housing / activities Surface of the land : 10.23 ha iscussions are underway to develop this industrial zone, as an extension of the Chantereine district’s urban renewal project and in connection with the future Drancy-Bobigny GPE station. Programmatic assumptions from the 2013 CDT. 10. Former deportation station : Infrastructure Land surface : 4.50 ha Site registered on the supplementary list of historical monuments in 2005. Former freight station which served between July 1943 and August 1944 as a departure point for convoys of deportees to Auschwitz Birkenau. Project to enhance the site with the creation of a memorial route of the deportation (with the cattle platform of the Pantin station and the Fort of Romainville), in connection with the National Memorial of the Drancy Camp 11. La Folie - ZI Les Vignes: Mixed housing / activities Surface of the land : 19.80 ha Sector included in the intercommunal OAP of La Folie (interconnection M5 and future Tangentielle Nord). Transformation of part of the ZI des Vignes and SNCF land near the train station is envisaged. 12. Hypercentre of Bobigny : Mixed housing / activities Surface of the land : 26.95 ha Continuation of the transformation of the city center.


Transformation of the Bobigny 2 shopping center into a mixed-use district combining housing, shops, offices and nearby facilities. Restructuring of the Paul Eluard and Chemin Vert - Allende housing estates (including slab restructuring). Redevelopment of the Pablo Picasso interchange (future station of line 15). Programmatic orientations: between 60,000 and 70,000 m² of housing, between 5,000 and 20,000 m² of offices and approximately 10,000 m² of shops and services. 13. ZAC of the sustainable district of the Plaine de l’Ourcq : Mixed housing / activities Land surface : 42.14 ha Redevelopment of the Ourcq Canal sector and the former RN3 into a mixed neighborhood, in connection with the opening up of the site (TZen 3, “Pont de Bondy” GPE line 15 station, pedestrian bridge over the canal). Programming: 90,000 m² of housing and 18,000 m² of specific housing, 31,000 m² of tertiary activities, 75,000 m² of business and commercial premises, a 3,200 m² hotel facility and 1.7 ha of superstructure parking. Extension of the school group, installation of the National Center for Street Arts, creation of a footbridge over the canal, development of the banks and new public spaces.

Intercommunal OAP sector in the Est Ensemble PLUI (2019) and registered in the new national urban renewal program (NPNRU, of national interest). Objective: to make the neighborhood attractive again for residential purposes by relying on its heritage, architectural and landscape value. Diversification of housing (objective of 25% of new housing in accession with reconstitution off-site, i.e. 375 housing units) and requalification of the social stock, strengthening of the centrality around the market. Studies to be launched in 2017. 16. Semard-Casanova sector : Housing Land surface : 30.58 ha Sector of approximately 35 hectares, part of which has been selected for the new national urban renewal program (NPNRU, of national interest). Objective: to create a vast urban continuity between the south and the center of the town (Blanc-Mesnil RER station), through the landscaping of the connecting roads and construction and rehabilitation operations. Program planned: 290 new housing units (90 of which will be built within the PLU), rehabilitation of the Casanova sector, creation of two “village centers” (6,000 m² of shops and services), renovation of school facilities and creation of a north-south plant continuity.

14. Bondy Nord - Bondy Centre - Pont de Bondy - La Sablière - Secteur Sud : Habitat Surface of the land : 73.60 ha Continuation of the large-scale urban renewal project initiated in 2010 under the NPNRU (National Interest Program). improvement and diversification of housing, strengthening of the supply of local facilities and services, economic development, strengthening of inter-neighborhood links and environmental approach. By neighborhood: to continue the construction of the city center (De Lattre de Tassigny eco-district) and the Cité Jardin project in Terre Saint Blaise, to support the urban transformation along Avenue Galliéni (from the Pont de Bondy to the Bruyère neighborhood), to diversify housing and strengthen the polarity of the Noue Caillet neighborhood and to restructure the Cité des Merisiers. 15. Quartier de l’Abreuvoir : Housing Land surface: 19.41 ha

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Fig. 35 - Bird eye view on Drancy Source: Google Maps

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1.10 | Conclusion To sum up, it is clear that the vast history of Drancy neighborhood is layered in its peculiar urban fabric. Its teritory has been used as a playground of social, political and urban experiments and trends which is obvious in the typologies of urban fabrics juxtaposed in the Drancy. In the close proximity we can see: the suburban housing, resulting from the large housing estates of the end of the XIXth century, covers more than half of the territory; garden city of the years 20-30s; numerous collective housing residences which punctuate whole neighborhood; as well as various industrial typologies. Despite its important urban and historic value we could also say that neighborhood lacks clear urban hierarchy and structure which could be huge challenge in the future with additional urban developments. To address the future development potential of the neighborhood and its challenges, in 2009 Drancy municipality has developed legal document, Local Urban Plan (PLU De Drancy - Le plan local d’urbanisme) which has been revised in 2011. According to the document main objectives of the neighborhood will include densification of the urban fabric, which is mainly possible along the main transport axes. Additional goal is to improve quality of the existing environment, important part of which includes addressing conditions of existing social housings and improvement of their living conditions. The PLU objectives are in line with the master thesis project, which redevelops historic housing estate located near the crossroad of two main axes of the neighborhood: Av. Jean Jaures (RD 30) and Av. Henri Barbusse (RD 116).

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02

50

CITE DE LA MUETTE


51


n

,

y

h d

52


2.1 | Introduction Program: Housing complex commissioned by the OPHBM de la Seine, completing the initial program for the construction of 15 garden cities around Paris launched in 1919 Architects: Marcel Lods (1891–1978) and Eugène Baudouin (18981983) Engineers: Vladimir Bodiansky (1894- 1966) and Eugène Mopin (1898-1983) Dates: 1931-1934. Location: Avenue Jean Jaurès, Drancy (Seine Saint Denis) Dimensions: 10 ha, 1200 collective housing Construction system: Heavy prefabrication (metal frame and vibrated concrete panels) Tucked back from the main road, the three-sided, U-shaped grande cour (big courtyard, also referred to as the grande place or big public square) blends discretely into the surrounding landscape of rather drab, low-rise apartment buildings. On each of its four stories, gray stone and concrete walls are interspersed with faux-balcony windows framed in black, white, or dingy salmon. The central courtyard’s grassy lawn and tidy grove of trees are encircled by a hodgepodge of cars belonging to the cité’s five hundred residents. The Cité de la Muette appears a quiet, unassuming, wholly ordinary apartment building. Yet the stories that populate the cité ’s past and its present are quite the opposite.

Fig. 36 - Aerial View of La Muette complex, undated Source: Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 37 - Postcard of Cité de la Muette Source: Digital archive of the official site of La Ville de Drancy

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2.2 | Architects Behind the Project Marcel Lods graduated in architecture in 1923. He is particularly interested in the techniques of the prefabrication inaugurated by the Bauhaus in Dessau. For him, a building should be constructed as a automotive, with the same speed, using standardized and industrialized elements. Eugène Baudouin, winner of the Grand Prix de Rome in 1928, in 1930 joined forces with Marcel Lods, whose ideas he shared. Their agency is quickly moving towards an architecture which is industrialized and technological. While the Cite de la Muette had its origins in the already experimental garden city, architects took urban architectural innovation even farther at Drancy’s new cité. Alongside figures such as Le Corbusier, they were prominent architects of the emergent modern movement in interwar France, and their designs for the Cite de la Muette reflected their modernist proclivities in contrast to the regionalist and traditionalist leanings of most cité-jardin architects.

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2.3 | The Beginning The land of the city of la Muette is acquired by the OPHBM in 1925 in Drancy. Covering an area of 10 ha, it is located in the edge of a residential area, near the town hall from Drancy. The project is part of the vast program construction of fifteen garden cities around Paris undertaken by Henri Sellier, who then headed the OPHBM (Office Public des Habitations Bon Marché) of the Seine. It follows to the construction of another garden city built in Drancy by Bassompierre and Ruté in 1920–1922. At la Muette, the initial program provides for the construction of a city of 1250 HBM (Habitation Bon Marché) and HBMA type housing (Improved Cheap Housing), as well as collective facilities on the ground floor: schools (for girls and boys), kindergarten, nursery, dispensary, shops, a library, a cinema, a gymnastics hall, a church as well as a general service block (garbage destruction plant, boiler room, control room). Courtyards and roof terraces are designed to serve as places of meeting and exchange.

Fig. 38 - Eugène Beaudouin et Marcel Lods. Exhibition “Eugène Beaudouin et Marcel Lods, architectes d’avant-garde” Source: Cité de l’architecture, CAPA, centre d’archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 39 - Postcard of Cité de la Muette 2 Source: Digital archive of the official site of La Ville de Drancy

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Fig. 40 - Archival picture from Naghsh-e Jahan square located at Isfahan city, Iran Source: www.researchgate.com © Malihe Bahari

56


Fig. 41 - Aerial view of La Muette, 2021 Source: Google Earth Pro

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Fig. 42 - La Muette complex plan, not dated Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

2.4 | The Idea of the Architectural Plan Through a new form of expression of the project, the architects Eugène Beaudouin and Marcel Lods will bring out the idea that the architectural party must henceforth be registered on the scale of the ground plan, the urban and, more generally, of the city. The series of plans testifies to the architects’ design process and the different versions of the project of the difficulty in reaching a consensus in the face of programmatic, economic and contextual constraints. In 1931, the first sketch of the city of la Muette orients the plan towards the departmental road which crosses the city of Drancy (from north to south), with the idea that the urban principle organizes the connection of new buildings with the existing one. The introduction of the masterplan indicates that town planning now guides architectural design. In this idea, Marcel Lods writes: “It is the mass, it is the ordering, and in a word it is the town planning which makes the greatness of the city.”

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Fig. 43 - La Muette complex plan, not dated Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

Fig. 44 - La Muette complex plan, 1932 Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

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Fig. 45 - La Muette complex plan, 1933 Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

In 1932, the second sketch of the cité reveals several architectural typologies respectively called combs, steps and towers oriented this time along an east-west axis. Through the meticulous representation of the shadows cast, accentuated by the monochromy of the drawing, it appears very clearly that the urban composition is dictated by the concern for sunshine and the ventilation of the dwellings. During the same year, Beaudouin and Lods, surprised by the reduction in the budget, were forced to modify the overall plan one last time by transforming the Grand Place and its equipment into a housing building called, because of its form, the Horseshoe. The use of the ground plane in the design process has altered the scale of architectural thought and architecture at the same time. The idea that emerges from the various sketches is that of a simple geometric composition, whose volumes extracted from elementary prisms introduce modern town planning and architecture into collective housing.

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Fig. 46 - La Muette complex plan, not dated Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècleSource: www.apur.org

Fig. 47 - La Muette complex plan, not dated Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

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Fig. 48 - Aerial Photograph 1 Source: © Marcel Lods, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

2.5 | Aerial Photographs Passionate about aviation and photography, Marcel Lods developed a series of photos of the city of la Muette with the plane from which he frequently photographed his works. The aerial views reflect the architect’s interest in this new representation tool which makes it possible not to reserve the understanding of volumes and the reading of spaces for architects and building professionals. The photography accompanies the drawing in the representation of the project with more efficiency. With this point of view and the perspective of the context, the urban scale of the project appears obvious, the rhythm given to the composition of the buildings accentuated and the high-rise dwellings revealed by comparison with the surrounding pavilions. Most of the aerial views are taken during the construction of the city, when the building of the Grand Place has not yet been completed. These photographs therefore make it possible to understand the assembly mechanisms, the installations (prefabrication factories, service roads and storage) and, more generally, the progress of the site.

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Fig. 49 - Aerial Photograph 2 Source: © Marcel Lods, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

Fig. 50 - Aerial Photograph 3 Source: © Marcel Lods, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

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2.6 | The Innovative Construction System The construction site of the city of la Muette began in 1933 with the construction of towers and combs. As soon as it opens, the site and the construction methods are abundantly published thanks to the important production of details, and in particular axonometries which will make it possible to respond more precisely to the need for communication on the project. To respond, the architects will develop a mixed construction combining a metal frame and prefabricated concrete elements added to the facade. This system, initiated by Vladimir Bodiansky for the company Eugène Mopin, combines the advantages of metal construction (lightness and speed of manufacture) and that of concrete (resistant and economical). The structure is made up of iron beams with an “I” profile welded together. The use of vibrated concrete panels avoids scaffolding and formwork. In addition, Mopin claimed that the

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facade elements would be a third lighter than in conventional constructions . The exterior walls are formed by “T” cusp panels lined inside with aerated concrete panels . The voids between these walls improve insulation and allow the windows designed by Jean Prouvé to slide. Finally, lightweight liquid concrete is poured along the vertical beams. Soils are also formed by cuspid slabs. In order not to slow down the site, materials are delivered at night. The area north of the towers is used as a molding, demolding and assembly area for concrete elements. Several concrete modules are available: floor elements, walls, trellises, stairs, windows, balconies, door frames… They are then moved on rails. To adorn the facades and break the monotony of gray concrete, Carrara marble pebbles are included when pouring the facade slabs.Faced with new budgetary restrictions and the freezing of loans granted to low-cost housing, the first phase ended in 1933 without the construction of the Grand Place. Determined to continue this experience, all the construction players in the project launched the Grand Place site at the beginning of 1934. In this difficult context, the architects were forced to change the construction system. The metal structure is left aside in favor of a frame entirely made of concrete.


Fig. 51-52 - Extracts from the magazine Chantiers, n° 2, March 1933 Source: Revue Chantiers, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

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66


Fig. 53-54 - - Extracts from the magazine Chantiers, n° 2, March 1933 Source: Revue Chantiers, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

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Fig. 55 - Perspective View of La Muette Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 56 Map showing the connection between the deportation camp and the deportation station Source: www.memoire-viretuelle.fr

2.7 | The “Comb” Plan The Cité de la Muette was a vast ensemble in which coexist two types of buildings, according to a “comb” plan: • 10 bars (HBM) of 2 or 3 stages arranged in parallel and separated by courtyards which were to be planted with lawns and trees and which will in fact act as parking lots. • 5 towers (HBMA) of 15 floors and 50 m high, located at the north end of the bars, so as not to interfere with the sunlight. Other stepped buildings enclose the northern part of the land, as well as a 4-storey building called “horseshoe”, built around a courtyard about 200 m long and 40 m wide. The project has been criticized for its “accursed skyscrapers”, its “absurd and inhuman buildings”. Today la Muette is considered a true architectural laboratory for several reasons: • It corresponds to a new type of town planning functionalist or “rational”, based on repetition of identical urban elements

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defined on the basis of orientation criteria. • It is also distinguished by the use of industrial construction. Scientifically organized, the site is founded on the principle of Taylorism. Three factories installed on site for the duration of the work - they are called “fairground” factories - allow the production of standardized inlaid vibrated concrete facade panels of marble pebbles. These prefabricated elements are then transported by overhead cranes then monorails, and are assembled on a metal frame made in the factory. For what is the actual assembly, everything is done so that the installation is simple, achievable by unskilled workers and little trained. This is a “dry” assembly (the panels slide in grooves, juxtapose and interlock), and “in the farmhouse” that is to say without crane or scaffolding (the gantries on 5 levels are mounted flat, then erected vertically, the framework of the building serving as scaffolding). This technology is at the forefront of French and even European production in the construction industry. The same construction system will be used for the Suresnes Outdoor School (1935). Subsequently, Beaudouin and Lods will move towards the all-metal prefabrication, as is the case


for the Maison du Peuple in Clichy (1937). • With its 5 towers of 15 floors and its bars of 3 to 4 levels, set up in combs, cogs and horseshoes, it prefigures the great post-war complexes.

still manifested the paternalistic inclinations and social engineering goals of early twentieth-century reformers as well as a confidence that architectural form could influence behavior and values.

Designs for the new cité also aligned with other contemporary architectural trends. The Cite de la Muette followed the cité-jardin model as social housing intended for suburban working people. Keeping with the special attention paid to hygienic worker housing at the time, the buildings were carefully configured to provide adequate space and natural light. The towers, for example, were situated so the shadow of one building never fell on another. Tenants’ material, intellectual, recreational, and even spiritual needs would be provided for by the school, church, swimming pool, and commercial establishments included in the design. The grande cour’s open space would foster sociability, and the complex as a whole was to be a model community, epitomizing modern comfort and social harmony. While departing from the cité-jardin aesthetically and technologically, Lods and Beaudoin’s modernist cité

“We were a visiting nation then. All of Europe marched in Suresnes, in Drancy. They were coming to see what was being done under the direction of Sellier” - Marcel Lods “Everything that today belongs to the clichés of the industrialization of the building and which has now passed as the dominant building practice is germinating in Drancy” - François Laisney (1976) “Drancy is part of the production system of the pre-war OPHLM garden estates: it will be the last major state order for social housing. But by taking up the themes of the European constructive avant-garde, it anticipates the production logic of large post-war complexes.”- François Laisney (1976)

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2.8 | Media Coverage The fifteen-storey towers were the tallest in France at the time. They are nicknamed “the first skyscrapers in the Paris region”, and are the subject of press articles and postcards. Despite its incompleteness, the city of la Muette is considered sufficiently important to be presented in two temporary exhibitions in 1939: “French architecture” at the museum of modern art of the city of Paris, and “Houses and Housing: Industrial Art” at MOMA from New York. In 1933, the review Chantiers, in an issue devoted to the cité of la Muette under the title “Study on rationalization. Standard construction methods in the building” , publishes an axonometry of the facade. From now on, the objective is to offer a rational construction at low cost using means simple mechanics, industrialized parts and a low-skilled workforce. In 2014 the project was presented in the French Pavilion of the 14th Venice International Architecture Exhibition, with a short film showing the innovative construction of the complex as the part of the theme “The large housing complex: saving heterotopia or place of seclusion? “.

Fig. 57 - Cover page of Chantiers, n° 2, March 1933 dedicated to La Muette complex Source: Revue Chantiers, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 58 - Postcard of Drancy Source: www.patrimoine.seinesaintdenis.fr

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Fig. 59-60 - Cover page and extract from La Technique des Traveaux, n° 14, November 1934 dedicated to La Muette complex Source: Revue Chantiers, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

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Fig. 61 - Postcard of Cité de la Muette 3 Source: Digital archive of the official site of La Ville de Drancy

Fig. 62 - Maquette of Drancy complex Source: Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

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Fig. 63 - Jewish deportation camp courtyard Source: drancy.memorialdelashoah.org

2.9 | Economic Crisis While some contemporaries disparaged Lods and Beaudoin’s radical design and rationalized approach, many celebrated these “first skyscrapers in the Parisian region,” praised the apartments’ domesticamenities, and lauded the architects’ construction technologies as revolutionary. Yet despite their ambitious plans, Lods and Beaudoin realized only a small portion of their design. Construction began in 1933 but stalled two years later due to funding shortages. Only the towers were ready for tenants; the grande cour remained semicompleted until after World War II, and the remaining residences and amenities were never built. The crisis experienced by France in the 1930s gave a brutal halt to this ambitious agenda. In front of increased land and construction costs, the budget is indeed considerably restricted. Of the 1,250 housing units planned, only 950 are actually carried out. Under the influence of the functionalist movement, the conception evolves in favor of the collective, with high-rise constructions, breaking with the horizontal architecture of the garden cities built so far.

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As the Great Depression deepened in France and Drancy’s population declined, the OPHBM could not find tenants for the towers. The buildings were leased to the twenty-second legion of the Gardes Mobiles, which turned the Cité de la Muette into a barracks. Designed and promoted as one of the most advanced urban planning projects of the interwar period, the Cité de la Muette fulfilled little of its promise before World War II.

2.10 | War and Memory Whereas gendarmes were the first to inhabit the towers, prisoners were the first “tenants” of the grande cour. According to some accounts, the cité ’s earliest internees were Communists, arrested during the fallout from the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact in August 1939 and interned in the system of camps established by the Third Republic to imprison enemy nationals. In other accounts, French and British prisoners of war and Yugoslav, British, and Greek civilians held this distinction, interned by the Germans following the May 1940 inva-


Fig. 64 - Jewish prisoners in Drancy camp Source: drancy.memorialdelashoah.org

sion of France and the defeat of French forces. By either account, the open end of the U was sealed off with barbed wire, and watchtowers were constructed at the four corners. With the trappings of internment in place, the Cité de la Muette became the camp de Drancy. However, it was not until August 1941, when four thousand Jews were rounded up in Paris and interned at the camp, that the Cité de la Muette entered its most notorious period as an almost exclusively Jewish internment and transit camp. Though the camp was under German oversight, French gendarmes carried out day-to-day operations, until the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police) took over administration in 1943. Living conditions inside the half-finished buildings of the grande cour were deplorable, and the horror increased with the commencement of regular deportations to Nazi extermination camps in summer 1942. Of the more than seventy-five thousand Jews deported from France during World War II, sixty-seven thousand were sent east in the sixty-two convoys that departed from Drancy, all but six of them destined for Auschwitz. The last deportation convoy left Drancy for Auschwitz on July 31, 1944, just over two weeks before the

camp was liberated on August 18. The internees left the barbed wire behind in the days that followed and by the liberation of Paris on August 25, 1944, the “antichambre d’Auschwitz” had become an empty apartment complex once again. However, the Cité de la Muette’s place in history had been forever changed by its association with one of the greatest atrocities of the twentieth century.

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Fig. 65 - Ground floor plan of La Muette deportation camp Source: www.memoire-viretuelle.fr

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2.11 | Still a Place of Memory Even as war still raged in France and elsewhere, Jews returned to the Cité de la Muette. They made their first pilgrimage on September 22, 1944, a little over a month after the liberation of Paris and repeated the ritual in 1946 and 1947. For Jews who lacked information confirming the time and place of their loved ones’ deaths, the former camp de Drancy became a meaningful place to mourn, particularly as many death certificates of Jews killed in deportation read “mort à Drancy” (died at Drancy). The Cité de la Muette was not Auschwitz, but as it served as a surrogate place of death to bureaucrats issuing death certificates, so it was claimed as a surrogate place of mourning by a shattered Jewish community. However, in the 50ies the Holocaust was not embraced as part of the dominant story line, and neither the general French population nor the French Jewish community saw preserving Holocaust sites and their stories as a priority. By contrast, housing was understood as crucial to rebuilding war-torn France. The Paris region suffered severe housing shortages following World War II as the population mushroomed. Parisian suburbs in particular received thousands of migrants from the provinces, the colonies, and foreign countries. Drancy’s population alone increased from 43,000 to 50,600 from 1948 to 1953. Estimates in 1954 placed the Paris region’s housing deficit between 410,000 and 500,000 dwellings, and existing dwellings were often rundown and outdated. On arriving in Paris and its suburbs, migrants often found themselves among the ranks of the poorly lodged or homeless. Squatter settlements, known as bidonvilles, sprang up on the edges of major cities, including Paris. Like interwar lotissements, the bidonvilles lacked basic services such as electricity, running water, and sewers. While the bidonvilles were occupied mainly by French citizens through the 1950s, the proportion of immigrant inhabitants, largely from Algeria or Portugal, increased into the 1960s. The growing visibility of the bidonvilles, poor migrants, and foreign immigrants only accentuated the marginal status of suburban areas like Drancy.

plexes, known as “grands ensembles” already mentioned in the first chapter. From the MRU’s (Ministry of Reconstruction and Urbanism) perspective, grands ensembles were ideal, as they provided large quantities of dwellings quickly and inexpensively, and government land acquisition policies, financial assistance, and building standards supported their construction. As building firms increasingly adopted these criteria in a bid for state funding, massive blocks of homogeneous concrete towers and bars became common features on the French landscape. Drancy followed the trend, building four new large-scale housing complexes between 1957 and 1962.

In an attempt to resolve the housing crisis, the government stepped in, first to build emergency shelters and eventually to support the construction of high-density apartment com-

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Fig. 66 - Aerial View of La Muette Source: © Marcel Lods, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle

The Cité de la Muette itself finally took up its originally intended “vocation” as social housing during the postwar housing crisis.The departmental social housing office—now the Office Public d’Habitations à Loyer Modéré, or OPHLM— removed the barbed wire and watchtowers and renovated the buildings. In 1947 the grande cour was divided into 368 subsidized studios and one-bedroom apartments, and the cité was put back on the rental market the following year. While the cité had been planned as a paragon of modern comfort, postwar residents found their lodgings far from satisfactory. The tower tenants’ grievances included a general displeasure with living in high-rise buildings, expensive rents, poor insulation, cramped living space, inadequate waterproofing, and the inaccessibility of central Paris.

to these material privations, the OPHLM found it difficult to maintain adequate numbers of tenants at the Cité de la Muette. Consequently, in 1954 the towers and their adjacent buildings were again leased to the twenty-second legion of the Gardes Mobiles; the gendarmerie continued to use the tower buildings as a barracks after the army acquired ownership from the OPHLM in 1973. Two years later the army decided to demolish the towers and build a new barracks and a stadium better suited to its needs. The barracks were evacuated in November 1975, and demolition began in early 1976. While the grande cour remained untouched under ownership of the OPHLM, the once-celebrated skyscrapers of the Cité de la Muette were to be scratched from the landscape.

2.12 | Demolition of Towers The residents of the housing were increasingly disenchanted with the lack of transportation, the poor construction, and the absence of social infrastructure. Likely due at least in part

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Fig. 67 - Demolition of La Muette towers Source: www.photorama-marseille.com © Valérie Horwitz


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The architects passionately argued for the preservation of what they termed “a remarkable testament [un témoin remarquable] of the history of architecture, and a very important step in the evolution of construction.” They highlighted the originality of Lods and Beaudoin’s design and construction methods and noted that the cité was cited in studies of contemporary architecture. Even if the whole complex could not be saved, classification advocates maintained that at least one tower should be preserved as a “witness” to Lods and Beaudoin’s modernist urban masterpiece. In their assessment, the destruction of this twentieth-century Architectural landmark would represent a tragic loss. However, it is interesting to know that architectural history and logistics dominated these discussions. No one spoke of the Holocaust or a lieu de mémoire. The reason architectural history overshadowed Holocaust memory in the 1976 debates may be quite simple: the grande cour was not owned by the army, so the actual site of internment was exempt from demolition. However, even the plea for an architectural archetype was not enough to garner official recognition and protection for the Cité de la Muette in 1976. On the one hand, the defeat of the classification initiative seems to have been largely financial and logistical. Ministry of Culture officials withdrew support on April 5, in part because the towers were not structurally sound enough to merit saving, in part because the Ministry of Defense suggested that the Ministry of Culture would have to foot the bill for changes required of the gendarmerie’s construction plans. On the other hand, changing attitudes and practices regarding the grands ensembles may have influenced the decision. While classification advocates celebrated the Cité de la Muette as a precursor to postwar grands ensembles, in actuality the grands ensembles had fallen into disrepute by 1976. The first grands ensembles had been heralded in political discourses and architectural treatises as national achievements that would usher in a new era of French civilization by solving the housing crisis and providing the foundation for a hygienic environment and robust community life, but critics reversed their tone in the early 1960s. No longer enthused by the novel towers and bars pioneered by the Cité de la Muette and expanded on by later projects like the Cité des Quatre Milles and Sarcelles, critics scorned the grands ensembles as formally deadening and monotone.

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They denounced faulty construction, weak sound insulation, the lack of communal spaces and of infrastructure, and social tensions among residents. Critics described an emerging “neurosis of the banlieue” or “sarcellitis,” the mass housing disease. Residents joined in disparaging the grands ensembles as clapiers (rabbit stables), casernes civiles (civil barracks), cages à poules (chicken cages), cités termitières (termite cities), and cités ghettos (ghetto towns). As many lower-middle-class French moved out of the grands ensembles in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they left already dilapidated buildings to growing numbers of North African and Portuguese immigrants, who were often blamed for the decay of social housing estates.82 Envisioned as an urban planning panacea in the 1950s, the grands ensembles were perceived as in crisis not a decade later. Whether the classification proposal failed due to bureaucratic squabbles, the physical deterioration of the buildings, or the decline of the grands ensembles in urban planning discourse and practice, destruction of the first skyscrapers in the Parisian region at the Cité de la Muette continued as planned in 1976. On May 9, 1976, only one tower remained, awaiting its rendez-vous with the wrecking crews that had already destroyed its four neighbors. For the journalist covering the day’s events, however, the tower was not the tribute to architectural achievement that the Conservation des Bâtiments had hoped to preserve. Rather, the journalist described the surviving tower as “still standing as a menacing testament. Below its ominous gaze, a crowd of between two and three thousand had gathered to inaugurate a memorial to the Holocaust and the tens of thousands of people who had passed through the camp de Drancy.


2.13 | Muette as a Cultural Heritage Plans for a city-sponsored monument at the Cité de la Muette had first been floated over a dozen years earlier in December 1963. Apparently inspired in part by the Eichmann trial, the municipal council of Drancy, under communist mayor Maurice Nilès, called for a memorial to commemorate its city’s “triste privilège” (unfortunate privilege) of serving as the location of the notorious camp de Drancy. Although the initial proposal called for a generalized deportation monument, the memorial inaugurated at the Cité de la Muette in 1976 embodied the specifically Jewish experience of the camp de Drancy and the Holocaust. A memorial committee under the leadership of Nilès and AADJF president Henry Bulawko selected sculptor Shelomo Selinger’s design from thousands of entries in 1973. Selinger’s artwork was profoundly influenced by his experiences as a Polish-born Jew and Holocaust survivor, and his memorial at the Cité de la Muette was particularly “thick with Jewish symbolism.”

Fig. 68 - Memorial of Sloah Source: www.www.memorialdelashoah.org

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Fig. 69 - Cité de la Muette façade Source: www.franceinter.fr © AFP / Frédérick Florin

Encoded in the physical form of the memorial’s three sculpted red granite pillars were Hebrew letters, numbers with mystical meaning, and references to Jewish religious practices. For example, ten figures clustered in the central pillar totaled the number needed for prayer in Jewish tradition. One of these figures wore ritual tefillin, symbolizing the act of prayer. The memorial text also called attention to a specifically Jewish tragedy, both explicitly by informing the passerby that Jews were the primary internees at Drancy and implicitly through Hebrew (translated into French) and untranslated Yiddish text. The inauguration marked the beginning of increasing Holocaust memorialization at the cité, and it was also emblematic of an emergent Jewish Holocaust memory throughout France. As the towering icons of the Cité de la Muette’s architectural history were reduced to rubble, a new memorial literally and symbolically marked the cité as a Holocaust lieu de mémoire. In 1988 a wagon-témoin was installed a few meters behind the memorial. This merchandise railcar, which Selinger and

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Bulawko procured from the French national railway company, was a model similar to those used to deport Jews from France. A small exhibit relating the story of the camp was installed inside. The cité remained a social housing estate and was in need of renovations. To make life more comfortable for residents, the departmental social housing office—now the Office Départemental des Habitations à Loyer Modéré—decided to replace the drafty window frames with better-insulated polyvinyl chloride. Renovations began in January 2000, but fewer than half the frames were replaced before work halted in June. The camp de Drancy at the Cité de la Muette was granted monument historique status in 2001. By the words of Hervier, regional conservator of Ile-de-France’s general inventory of historical monuments, that “the Cité de la Muette, at Drancy, presents two levels of interest:it is an outstanding work of twentieth-century architecture, and it is also a site of memory [lieu de mémoire] of the deportation.


In contrast to the 1976 deliberations, architectural history and Holocaust memory were consistently paired as joint aspects of the cité’s significance in 2000. 70 years after the start of the deportation of the Jews of France towards nazi extermination camps, the Shoah Memorial inaugurated in September 2012 at Drancy, a new space destined for the history and education of the period, opposite the Cité de la Muette.The memorial which has been constructed on a stretch of land graciously donated by the municipality of Drancy, was designed by the Swiss architect Roger Diener as a building that should be sober and dignified. The result is respectful of the site and urban environment, offering the visitor a panoramic view onto the Cité de la Muette. It is made up of 5 levels: a conference room in the basement, reception spaces on the ground floor, educational rooms in which to receive groups, and a documentation center.

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2.14 | Cité de la Muette Now Life in the present at the Cité de la Muette carried enough trials without the past to worry over. As a “sensitive” cité in an “abnormal” département, the Cité de la Muette (along with the people who live there) has acquired a stigma and marginality for reasons having nothing to do with the Holocaust. Yet can we so easily dissociate the Cité de la Muette’s past implication in the genocide of European Jewry from its present as an impoverished cité or, for that matter, from its origins as a social housing project aimed at producing an industrious, docile working class? As a scholar Loïc Wacquant have pointed out “it is hardly possible for residents of cité to disregard the scorn of which they are the object since the social taint of living in a low-income housing project that has become closely associated with poverty, crime and moral degradation in the public mind affects all realms of existence—whether it is searching for employment, pursuing romantic involvements, dealing with public agencies such as the police, the health and social services, or simply talking with acquaintances. Fig. 70 - Cité de la Muette façade Source: Photo taken by thesis authors Fig. 71 - View from the La Muette window Source: www.photorama-marseille.com ©Valérie Horwitz

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03

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NOTION OF IMAGE THEORY


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3.1 | Introduction We can only think about architecture with the sequence of images. History of mankind is comprehensible through images. Be it a painting, fresco, relief, statue or even perspective view of a street. Images have been used as mnemonic instruments to remember or to communicate information to others. In Christian churches, sequences of frescoes or sculptures (middle ages) are used to display the information. The notion of an image is deeply rooted in our conscious. We use images to represent and preserve our ideas and emotions. As a step towards the design, thesis explores the notion of images and later uses this understanding to Generate architectural project. In this frames thesis is firstly interested in what makes an image memorable and unique, and how images connect to us on a subconscious level. (Phenomenological Studies.) And secondly we are interested in how can we use images of architecture and make them work together in order to take person through an emotional journey, or make him a participant in narrated story and still leave space to the imagination. “It is impossible to explain the marvelous human faculties of grasping, remembering and understanding vast entities of information – such as one’s own persona, with its entire historicity, or the continuum of time and places through one’s life – without the existence of embodied schemes, images mental models and embodied metaphors that structure, organize, integrate and maintain huge volumes of fragmented sense and ethical data.” “Whatever the initial catalyst is, let us assume that an architect has an architectural image inside his mind’s eye. The initial image is like a single still-frame, because I do not believe that at first any architect has a total image of an architecture simultaneously. There may be a series of images one after the other over a period of time, but the period of time, no matter how small, is a necessary ingredient for the evolution toward a totality.” “Soul Never thinks without an image”

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Juhani Pallasmaa

John Hejduk

Aristotele


Fig. 72 - Movie Contempt by Jean-Luc Godard 1963; view from the roof of Casa Malaparte Source: www.thecinemaarchives.com

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3.2 | Trigger images Interpretation of images is subjective matter related to personal experience and background, it is fair to say that certain types of images trigger our imagination much more then the others. Observing fire and water are always exciting to our mind and longer we observe more shapes and thoughts unfold. Same could be said about fog snow or rain which carry enigmatic nature with them. Sounds or lights behind the curtains always make us curious we imagine or are reminded of various scenarios. Even despite the beauty and perfection of human body it is most exciting when it is covered. To be brief our imagination becomes more active in cases where our mind can not fully comprehend the reality, when it is unable to completely rationalize the experience. “ Of all the objects in the world that invoke reverie, a flame calls for images more readily than any other. It compels us to imagine, when one dreams before a flame, what is perceived is nothing compared to what is imagined. The flame carries its walk to metaphors and images in the most diverse realms of meditation. Take it as subject of one of the verbs which express life and you will see it enlivens the verb […] of all images of the flame – the most artless as well as most refined, wisest as well as the most foolish – bear the mark of the poetic. Whoever dreams of flame is a potential poet.” Natural Phenomenon (Fire) “Peter Brook argues “A good space can be neutral, for an impersonal sterility gives no food to the imagination. The Bouffes has the magic and the poetry of a ruin, and Anyone who allowed themselves to be invaded by the atmosphere of a ruin Knows strongly how the imagination is let loose.” Ruin Fritz Lang~comments on the invisible contents of his film M (1931) : ‘There is no violence in my film M, or when there is, it occurs behind the scenes, as it were. Let’s take an example. You will remember the sequence where a little girl is murdered. All you see is a ball rolling and then stopping. Then a balloon flying off and getting caught in some telephone wires ... The violence is in your mind.” Hidden element space for imagination “If it aspires to a permanent mental impact, an architectural work has to engage our personal and active imagination; even an architectural narrative has to be left incomplete and open-ended in order to be completed and embodied by the imagination of the observer/occupant.” Ambiguity

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Guston Bechelard The Psychoanalysis of Fire 1938

Juhani Pallasmaa

Juhani Pallasmaa

Juhani Pallasmaa


Fig. 73 - Aldo Rossi Theatre of the World Source: www.architectuul.com

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3.3 | Archetypes “Images and associations met with in dreams, correlatives of which can be found in primitive thought, myths and rites, where called ‘archaic remnants of the mind’ by Sigmund Freud. CG Jung later gave these archaic images the name ‘archetype’. These historical associations operate a link between the world of consciousness and the unconscious world on instinct. Jung defines archetypes as both patterns and emotions that tend to generate certain kinds of associations and meanings. In essence, archetypes do not have fixed, closed symbolic connotations, because they act as generators of associations and emotions, and they encourage constant reinterpretation. They belong to life itself and are inextricably linked with the individual through his/here emotions, as Jung remarked. Adrian Strokes statement “Architectural forms are a language confined to the joining of a few ideographs of immense ramification,” points towards the archetypical essence of the language of architecture. Architecture articulates primary human experiences of being-in-the-world, such as gravity and mass, horizontality and verticality, earth and sky, center and periphery, nature and culture, landscape, and artifice, individuality and collectivity, past and present. The most fundamental encounter mediated by architecture is the confrontation of the self and the world. ” “ Instead of archetypes, Bachelard writes about ‘primal images’: ‘I am going to try to characterize[ ... ] primal images; images that bring out the primitiveness in us. In the order of their ontological emergence, the primal images of architecture are: floor, roof, wall, door, window, hearth, stair, bed, table and bath. This view significantly assumes that architecture is born with the establishment of the floor, a horizontal surface, rather than the roof. Profound architectural images are acts rather than formal entities or objects. These entities permit and invite: the floor invites movement, action and occupation; the roof projects shelter, protection and experiences of insideness; the wall signifies the separation of various realms and categories of spaces arid it creates, among other things, privacy and secrecy. Each one of the images than be analysed in terms of its ontology as well as its phenomenological essence.“

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Juhani Pallasmaa

Juhani Pallasmaa

Juhani Pallasmaa


Fig. 74 - The Ideal City painting attributed to Fra Carnevale Source: artsandculture.google.com

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3.4 | Poetic Image Steaming from above mentioned processes which are created by these various notions of image-mind interaction and generation of endless realities and emotions we can speak about poetic images which utilizes these notions and connects to our feelings and emotions. Which excite us to dream, to discover to feel and experience various realities, poetic images are embodied by each individual by perceiving them and connecting to them although the connection may not always be rationalized or understood and often might be perceived like a distant memory. We could say that it happens because of numerous senses which are utilised while observing a poetic image, visual impression, evoked distant memories, unconscious links and emotions, various meanings. We usually remember striking poetic images which are hard to rationalize. It’s like standing underneath the waterfall or looking to the sunrise something touched your, you recall the moment you remember the feeling but it’s almost impossible to explain it rationally to someone else, we could say that it is only possible with a poetic image. As Guston Bechelard said metaphor becomes on of the primary tools of a poetic image. “Metaphors evoke one another and are coordinated more than sensations, so That a poetic mind is purely and simply a syntax of metaphors.” “The greatest excellence (in the use of words) is to be happy in the use of metaphor; for it is this alone which cannot be acquired, and which, consisting in a quick discernment of resemblances, is a certain mark of genius,’ he argues in Poetics.” “The poetic essence of architecture is never stronger than when listening to the beating of heavy rain underneath a protecting roof, or when seeing a welcoming light in the window of one’s house in the dark of cold winter evening. “The well-being I feel, seated in front of my fire, while bad weather rages out-of-doors, is entirely animal. A rat in its hole, a rabbit in its burrow, cows in the stable, must all feel the same contentment that I feel. “(Simonides) called painting silent poetry and poetry painting that speaks”. If primary aim of architecture is to confront us with the world, poetic image is the tool through which it is made possible.

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Juhani Pallasmaa

Aristotle

Juhani Pallasmaa

Maurice de Vlamink

Plutarch


Fig. 75 - Shelters for a Roman Archaeological Site, Architect - Peter Zumthor Source: google.com ©Hans Danuser

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04

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PROJECT


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Fig. 76 - Aerial photo of Paris Source: Google Maps

4.1 | Introduction Master thesis addresses the historic site of Cité de la Muette from multiple perspectives: To begin with urban scale, site is located in the strategic center of the Drancy neighborhood on the crossroad of two main commercial axes: Av. Jean Jaures (RD 30) and Av. Henri Barbusse (RD 116). According to Drancy Local Urban Plan these streets will be needing further densification and development in the years to come. Additionally, Cité de la Muette is first of many large-scale housing estates which are scattered around the neighborhood. Research shows that leaving conditions as well as quality of infrastructure of many of this, once innovative, complexes has been declined over the years and there will be need of reimagining them in today’s contemporary urban environment. Additional aspect is the concentration of large number of immigrant population in the neighborhood and la Muette complex, which can be cause of marginalization of its population. Developed thesis project not only transforms the existing housing complex to improve its leaving environment but also proposes densification of its courtyard by adding new public functions which could be used on a neighborhood level and also attract people of various interests to the site. Additional factor which would be impossible to neglect is a threefold identity of the The Cité de la Muette: associated with the history of twentieth-century architecture and urban

planning, a lieu de mémoire of Holocaust-era internment and deportation, and a lieu de vie for present-day banlieue residents. Project develops interesting solution to complex issue of identity and memory: Thesis acknowledges existing housing complex as an innovative architectural and urban heritage of modernism, however at the same time project is developed with awareness of drawbacks of modernist tradition and reacts to it with the new design. Existing complex has extremely large dimensions, homogenous white façade is stretched along 200 meters, plan of the complex is also uniform, with 1-bedroom apartments and studios, all of which have the same unit of measure, and lastly, the complex has a large open courtyard (190x80 meters) which is not concilable with the human scale. Shortly looking at the Cité de la Muette from the post-postmodern perspective we conclude that it lacks certain degree of complexity and heterogeneity. Developed project introduces a complexity on various scales firstly new apartment typologies are developed for the housing, secondly interventions with functional and formal varieties appear in the courtyard. Interventions contrast uniform façade of the complex with its materiality and monumental architectural language. And positioning new objects of different dimensions and shape divide oversized courtyard into smaller human scale public spaces. Holocaust memory is also addressed by placing a memorial building in the courtyard. Lastly, living quality of current residents are improved with inclusive and flexible design and new infrastructure.

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Fig. 77 - Palais-Royal on the map of Turgot 1739 Source: fr.wikipedia.org

4.2 | Rethinking the Courtyard Huge courtyard with a total surface area of 1.5ha has been reimagined and transformed by superimposing the grid of trees in reference to the Parisian gardens. The grid is aligned with the existing building façade and the distance between the trees is taken from Paris urban parks, such as Jardin du Palais-Royal, Place Dauphine, Place des Vosges. The row of Tilias have been picked, as the most common tree in classic Parisian gardens. This operation allowed to divide the vast area of the courtyard in easily comprehensible and manageable segments and made the courtyard more in tune with the human scale. This operation additionally references Parisian tradition of public gardens with scattered green chairs and gravel surface where different activities (such as pétanque) are enjoyed.

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Cité de la Muette Courtyard - Current Situation

Cité de la Muette Courtyard - With Parisian grid of trees

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4.3 | New Program

Library

Gallery

Garden

Food Court

Memorial

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Next step was to work on the composition, selecting simple geometrical shapes to introduce new functions inside the courtyard. Design interventions are aligned with the existing building, forming interesting relationship with the homogeneous 200 meters long modernist façade, creating tension with the existing façade and producing different angles and views for the human eye. It is emphasizing, enhancing its permanence and contrasting it at the same time. Primary shapes such as square, triangle, circle, cross and the line are archetypical, which according to Jung’s definition means that they carry both patterns and emotions that tend to generate certain kind of associations and meanings. Archetypes do not carry clear symbolic meaning they are open-ended for associations and interpretations. Each shape is assigned with a specific function - cross is a memorial, square – a library, line is a food court; triangle - a garden; and circle is a gallery. Each of these functions has been selected according to what was missing in the neighborhood and is either addressing the problematic issues in Drancy, such as the low rate of higher education, or emphasizing local identit trying to bring diverse communities together.


New Program - Composition Variations

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New Program - Composition Variations

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Fig. 78 - Jardin du Palais Royal in winter Source: www.journalphotographique.eu ©Laurent Dufour

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Fig. 79 - Jardin du Palais Royal Source: www.tupariscombien.com

4.4 | Jardin à la française French garden is planned on a line and obeys two fundamental principles: a focused and symmetrical organisation. The space is broken down into a succession of geometric trees organised around axis, which opens into perspective. Geometry and perspective reign the supreme there, reflecting the royal desire to force nature to subdue it in forms which are not its own. The plan is geometric and takes full advantage of advances in optics, similarly the plant elevations are cut, forming walls and topiaries. The garden is ordered symmetrically, theatricality is expressed by surprise, the walker must discover new perspectives or hidden places. The groves contain discrete rooms. It is designed like a building, in a succession of rooms that the visitor walks through, subjected to surprises, rests and perspectives, lights and shadows, allusions and illusions.

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4.6 | New Apartment Typologies According to the preliminary research, La Muette building has been divided into 368 subsidized studios and one-bedroom apartments in the initial project. By this design project we tried to diversify the typology of the apartments, to match it with the current demand in response to the housing crisis, which has been brewing for some time in Paris. The city plans to requalify old social housing projects as well as to build new residential projects. And with the ever-changing household types and with the emerging non-traditional families, the need to diversify the living space becomes essential. The project introduces six types of apartments, including communal apartments targeted on students (colocation – a French term used for sharing apartments between not related people, mostly students) and people from different backgrounds. Besides the apartment, the design project also implies accommodating a hotel, which are not very common in Drancy.

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4.7 | Library Library building is the largest and the most dominating element in the courtyard compared to other interventions. Located in the center, it divides the courtyard into two parts and works as a central gravity point, obscuring view behind and inviting visitors to explore the space further. Monumental red concrete façade of the library is in contrast with Cité de la Muette’s elevation creating clear distinction between existing and new. Despite the formal distinction, the Library and the existing building are functionally linked and one part of the existing building which is facing the new library is used for its archives and administration and works as a continuation of the library space. Square-shaped library is curved towards the existing building, creating intimate public space in-between, further emphasising the link beween the new and the old. Library building has a courtyard in the center, which is enclosed by transparent glass walls, inviting people from outside. The interior space allows permeability through the building.

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Fig. 80-81 - Material Reference, Project: Pearling Valerio Olgiati Source: fr.wikipedia.org

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4.8 | Gallery For the Gallery circular shape is selected, its centripetal energy invites visitors to be inside the open space with the skylight. Gallery Building is not only functionally but also formally attached to the existing housing complex. It is the only intervention that is physycally linked to the existing building, on one point, as if it is trying to emerge from it. The line of the housing shading roof is subtracted from the façade of the gallery, this poetic gesture leaves impression that two buildings are joined as a Japanese puzzle. Administrative unit, archive, gallery shop and restaurant are distributed on five floors. The gallery rooftop serves as a public terrace.

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4.9 | Garden The third element is the garden of exotic trees with three large open entrances. Each of this entrances is facing a different side. One to the hotel, another to the main axis fo courtyard and the third to the façade of the existing building. However, the garden is placed in front of the entry passage from outside. It is inviting passers-by to enter the courtyard and enjoy the public space. The garden is a mix of different exotic trees, in order to create a small oasis for people who are of different origin. It presents itself like a hidden room waiting to be discovered and acts as an escape from the courtyard.

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4.10 | Food Court Linear rectangular shape is assigned to the food court. It serves as a linear market place, with street food counters. It is directed along the existing building, creating narrow street between the building and itself, enhancing the continuity and movement along the vitrines. The Idea of the Food Court has been inspired by initial reference of the architects of Cité de la Muette of Grand Bazar of Isfahan. Also, since the neghbourhood is mostly populated by migrants, Food court serves as the point of mixture of different cultures and food, enhancing inclusivity and conviviality.

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4.11 | Memorial Memorial is located at the entrance of the courtyard in the close proximity to Shelomo Selinger’s Holocaust Monument. Memorial has no doors or windows. Names of Jews who have experienced tragic past of Cité de la Muette inscribed on the walls are lit by the skylight and the narrow openings on the façade. With its diagonal openings it mediates the viewers to be confronted with the world and multiple narratives of the site. Standing in the middle of the building one sees the sky above, Cité de la Muette façade at the one end of the cross line and on the other wagon-témoin replica of wagons used to deport Jews from France.

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Bibliography: Architectural Theory

* Brendan O’Byrne, Patrick Healy - Architecture and Phenomenology - 2008 Bachelard Gaston - The Poetics of the Space - 1957 * Eisenstein Sergei - Film Form: Essays in Film History - 1969 Eisenstein Sergei *Montage and Architecture - 1937 Heidegger Martin - Building Dwelling Thinking - 1954 Hejduk John Mask of Medusa - 1985 * Jacobs Steven - Eisenstein’s Piianesi and Cinematic Space - 2016 * Pallasmaa Juhani - The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses - 1996 * Pallasmaa Juhani - The embodied Image: Imagination and Imagery in Architecture - 2011 * Rossi Aldo - The Architecture of the City 1966 * Schulz Norberg Christian - Existence Space and Architecture - 1971 * Schulz Norberg Christian - Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture - 1979 Schulz Norberg Christian - Heidegger’s Thinking on Architecture - 1983 * Tschumi Bernard - The Manhattan Transcripts - 1981 * Ukikke Andersen Anna - Translation in the architectural phenomenology of Christian Norberg-Schulz - Cambridge University Press, Issue 1, pp. 81 - 90 - 2018

Bibliography: Site Research

* Chantiers - organe technique de l’Archîtecture d’Aujourd’hui Mars 1933 N.2 * Claire Angelini - Drancy la muette — 2013 * Corteville Julie - Les cités-jardins d’Île-de-France, une certaine idée du bonheur — 2018 * Gaitanakîs John - Twelwe 1930’s Housing Pro)ects Revisited - 1987 * Guy Martignon - La Seine-Saint-Denis : hier et aujourd’hui — 1999 * Hansen Alise - A Lieu d’Histoire, a Lieu de Mémoire, and a Lieu de Vie: The Multidirectional Potential of the Cité de la Muette — 2014 * Moulin Jaques - Architectures en Seine-Saint-Denis — 2021

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List of Drawings Map - Commune of Drancy Drancy maps with housing typologies Map of Grand Paris Express Drancy Synthetic map Cité de la Muette Courtyard - Current Situation Cité de la Muette Courtyard - With Parisian grid of trees New Program - Composition Variations Courtyard - Final Composition Figure-Ground Map with Current Situation Figure-Ground Map with New interventions context plan Appartment Typologies Studio Type 1 (Large) Studio Type 2 (Small) 2-bedroom Apartment 3-bedroom Apartment Communal Apartment Type 2 1st Level Communal Apartment Type 2 2n Level Communal Apartment Type 1 For Students (Colocation) 1st Level Communal Apartment Type 1 For Students (Colocation) 2nd Level 1-bedroom Apartment Type 1 1-bedroom Apartment Type 2 1-bedroom Apartment Type 3 Ground Floor Plan First Floor Plan Second Floor Plan Library Axonometry Library Ground Floor Plan Library First Floor Plan Library Second Floor Plan Perspective view to the Library East Elevation -Library Façade Section AA’

Garden Axonometry Garden Ground Floor Plan Perspective view to the Garden East Elevation -Garden Façade Food Court Axonometry Food Court Ground Floor Plan Perspective view to the Food Court West Elevation -Food Court Façade Memorial Axonometry Memorial Ground Floor Plan Perspective view to the Memorial East Elevation -Memorial Façade

List of Graphs Graph. 1 - Demographic Evolution of Drancy through the Years Source: Cassini l’EHHESS Graph. 2 - Job Industry Statistics Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020 Graph. 3 - Education Statistics Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020 Graph. 4 - Capacity of Hotels and Collective Accommodation Statistics in Drancy Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020 Graph. 5 - Employment Statistics in Drancy Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020

Gallery Axonometry Gallery Ground Floor Plan Gallery First Floor Plan Gallery Second Floor Plan Perspective view to the Gallery West Elevation -Gallery Façade Section BB’

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List of Figures Fig. 1 - 1905-1955v view from Drancy and Bobigny Source: Departmental Archives of Seine-Saint-Denis; author F. Devillechabrolle Fig. 2 - Map of the surroundings of Paris by Abbé Delagrive, 17311741 Source: www.apur.org Fig. 3 - Plan Lefèvre, 1855-1861 Source: www.apur.org Fig. 4 - map known as type 1900, 1906 Source: www.apur.org Fig. 5 - Topographic map, known as type 1922, 1924-1947 Source: www.apur.org Fig. 6 - Cité Jardins De Drancy Source: Archive Seine Saint Denis Atlas de L’Architecture et du Patrimoine Fig. 7-8 - Garden City of Drancy Source: Archive Seine Saint Denis Atlas de L’Architecture et du Patrimoine Fig. 9 - Bird eye view on the suburbun housing of Drancy Source: Google Maps Fig. 10 - Cité de la Muette Skyscrapers Source: Archive Seine Saint Denis Atlas de L’Architecture et du Patrimoine Fig. 12 - Cité de la Muette, the great courtyard (La Muette) Source: Google Maps Fig. 13 - Residence des Erables (La Muette) Source: Google Maps Fig. 14 - The Square de la Liberation residence (La Muette) Source: Google Maps Fig. 15 - La caserne de gendarmerie mobile de Drancy (La Muette) Source: Google Maps Fig. 16 - The Thaïs city Source: Google Maps Fig. 17 - Cité de l’abreuvoir (Village Parisien) Source: Google Maps Fig. 18 - Cité Paul Vaillant Couturier (Drancy Center) Source: Google Maps Fig. 19 - Cité Gaston Roulaud (Petit Drancy) Source: Google Maps Fig. 20 - Cité Gargarine (Avenir Parisien) Source: Google Maps Fig. 21 - Cité Resistance (Avenir Parisien) Source: Google Maps Fig. 22 - Cité Cachin (Village Parisien) Source: Google Maps Fig. 23 - Cité Jean Lurçat (Avenir Parisien) Source: Google Maps Fig. 24 - Cité Paul Eluard (Petit Drancy) Source: Google Maps Fig. 25 - Fernand Péna Tower (Petit Drancy) Source: Google Maps Fig. 26 - Pablo Neruda and Salvador Allende towers (Drancy Center) Source: Google Maps Fig. 27 - Residence Danielle Casanova (Petit Drancy) Source: Google Maps Fig. 28 - Cité du Nord Source: Google Maps Fig. 29 - Residence les Coquelicots (Les Oiseaux) Source: Google Maps Fig. 30 - The Max Jacob residence (La Muette)

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Source: Google Maps Fig. 31 - The residence Le Vénus (La Muette) Source: Google Maps Fig. 32 - The residence of the Angelus (La Muette) Source: Google Maps Fig. 33 - Residence Diderot (Petit Drancy) Source: Google Maps Fig. 34 - La Gare Le Bourget Drancy Source: Google Maps Fig. 35 - Bird eye view on Drancy Source: Google Maps Fig. 36 - Aerial View of La Muette complex, undated Source: Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 37 - Postcard of Cité de la Muette Source: Digital archive of the official site of La Ville de Drancy Fig. 38 - Eugène Beaudouin et Marcel Lods. Exhibition “Eugène Beaudouin et Marcel Lods, architectes d’avant-garde” Source: Cité de l’architecture, CAPA, centre d’archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 39 - Postcard of Cité de la Muette 2 Source: Digital archive of the official site of La Ville de Drancy Fig. 40 - Archival picture from Naghsh-e Jahan square located at Isfahan city, Iran Source: www.researchgate.com © Malihe Bahari Fig. 41 - Aerial view of La Muette, 2021 Source: Google Earth Pro Fig. 42 - La Muette complex plan, not dated Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 43 - La Muette complex plan, not dated Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 44 - La Muette complex plan, 1932 Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 45 - La Muette complex plan, 1933 Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 46 - La Muette complex plan, not dated Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècleSource: www.apur.org Fig. 47 - La Muette complex plan, not dated Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 48 - Aerial Photograph 1 Source: © Marcel Lods, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 49 - Aerial Photograph 2 Source: © Marcel Lods, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 50 - Aerial Photograph 3 Source: © Marcel Lods, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle


Fig. 51-52 - Extracts from the magazine Chantiers, n° 2, March 1933 Source: Revue Chantiers, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 53-54 - - Extracts from the magazine Chantiers, n° 2, March 1933 Source: Revue Chantiers, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 55 / Table 1 - Perspective View of La Muette Source: © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 56 Map showing the connection between the deportation camp and the deportation station Source: www.memoire-viretuelle.fr Fig. 57 - Cover page of Chantiers, n° 2, March 1933 dedicated to La Muette complex Source: Revue Chantiers, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 58 - Postcard of Drancy Source: www.patrimoine.seinesaintdenis.fr Fig. 59-60 - Cover page and extract from La Technique des Traveaux, n° 14, November 1934 dedicated to La Muette complex Source: Revue Chantiers, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 61 - Postcard of Cité de la Muette 3 Source: Digital archive of the official site of La Ville de Drancy Fig. 62 - Maquette of Drancy complex Source: Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 63 - Jewish deportation camp courtyard Source: drancy.memorialdelashoah.org Fig. 64 - Jewish prisoners in Drancy camp Source: drancy.memorialdelashoah.org Fig. 65 - Ground floor plan of La Muette deportation camp Source: www.memoire-viretuelle.fr Fig. 66 - Aerial View of La Muette Source: © Marcel Lods, © Fonds Marcel Lods. Académie d’architecture/Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine/Archives d’architecture du XXe siècle Fig. 67 - Demolition of La Muette towers Source: www.photorama-marseille.com © Valérie Horwitz Fig. 68 - Memorial of Sloah Source: www.www.memorialdelashoah.org Fig. 69 - Cité de la Muette façade Source: www.franceinter.fr © AFP / Frédérick Florin Fig. 70 - Cité de la Muette façade Source: Photo taken by thesis authors Fig. 71 - View from the La Muette window Source: www.photorama-marseille.com ©Valérie Horwitz Fig. 72 - Movie Contempt by Jean-Luc Godard 1963; view from the roof of Casa Malaparte Source: www.thecinemaarchives.com Fig. 73 - Aldo Rossi Theatre of the World Source: www.architectuul.com Fig. 74 - The Ideal City painting attributed to Fra Carnevale Source: artsandculture.google.com Fig. 75 - Shelters for a Roman Archaeological Site, Architect - Peter

Zumthor Source: google.com ©Hans Danuser Fig. 76 - Aerial photo of Paris Source: Google Maps Fig. 77 - Palais-Royal on the map of Turgot 1739 Source: fr.wikipedia.org Fig. 78 - Jardin du Palais Royal in winter Source: www.journalphotographique.eu ©Laurent Dufour Fig. 79 - Jardin du Palais Royal Source: www.tupariscombien.com Fig. 80-81 - Material Reference, Project: Pearling - Valerio Olgiati Source: fr.wikipedia.org

List of Graphs Graph. 1 - Demographic Evolution of Drancy through the Years Source: Cassini l’EHHESS Graph. 2 - Job Industry Statistics Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020 Graph. 3 - Education Statistics Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020 Graph. 4 - Capacity of Hotels and Collective Accommodation Statistics in Drancy Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020 Graph. 5 - Employment Statistics in Drancy Source: Insee, territorial partners in geography as of 01/01/2020

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