Beton Brut

BÉTon brut

3

content

part 1 la haine // p.15 - 40 director // characters // plot

part 2 banlieue // p.40 - 86 social housing // banlieue // paris riots

part 3 brutalism // p.86 - 127 characteristics // figures // concrete

DEFINITION

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Béton brut Béton brut - is architectural concrete left unfinished or roughly finished after pouring and left exposed visually. The imprint of the wood or plywood formwork used for pouring is usually present on the final surface.

The use of béton brut was pioneered by Auguste Perret and other modern architects. It was used in such buildings as Unité d’Habitation in the early part of the twentieth century. It flourished as a part of the brutalist architecture of the 1960s and 70s. This largely gave way to structural expressionism as steel structures became more advanced and practical. Wood-imprinted concrete is still very popular in landscaping especially in some of the western European countries.

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introduction This book discusses the suppression within a society suggesting that the environment that they live in is the main cause. First of all, ‘La Haine’ and the characters relationships portray how people live in the French suburbs – ‘ La Banlieue’ and how they are confined within Brustilist Archiecture; cheap, quick and easy buildings that was designed only to house the growing masses and over population earlier in the century, after the second world war.

‘La Haine’ depicts negative relations such as race issues between the anti-immigrant skin heads and the main characters of the film.

These scenes are within the banlieue where they are encouraged into crime. My book highlights whether the easy solution of cheap social housing, confining the more unemployed members of society, lack of inspiration in the area, the brutal texture of concrete and the small living situations of these flats draw the characters towards crime, whilst introducing the real life riots of France in 1981 and 2005. The forced integration of cultures in France clearly caused some anti-social behaviour within the lower class communities.

This is reflected within the low income of the new immigrants of Paris due to the ambiguity of the state at that time. The generous supply of the welfare state within France providing low and affordable housing costs and health care is suggested through the brutalism of pre-cast concrete in building, therefore there is an extensive explanation of the characteristics of Beton Brut.

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paris

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part one

1

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la haine

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mathieu kassovitz Mathieu Kassovitz (born 3 August 1967) is a French director, screenwriter, producer, editor, and actor. Kassovitz is also the founder of MNP Entreprise, a film production company.

As a filmmaker, Kassovitz has made several artistic and commercial successes. He wrote and directed La Haine (Hate, 1995), a hugely controversial film in France dealing with themes around class, race, violence, and police brutality. The film won the César Award for Best Film and netted Kassovitz the Best Director prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival. When he was compared to Spike Lee because the film was being compared to Lee’s Do the Right Thing, he noted the irony:

I don’t know if it’s really important, or intelligent even, when people say to me I’m a white Spike Lee, because they said to Spike Lee you’re a black Woody Allen.

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He later directed Les Rivières Pourpres (2000), a police detective thriller starring Jean Reno and Vincent Cassel, another massive commercial success in France, and Gothika (2003), a fantasy thriller (considered by some to be a commercial failure, although it grossed over three times its roughly $40 million budget), with Halle Berry and Penélope Cruz that he did to earn the money he needed to develop a far more personal project Babylon Babies, the adaptation of one of Maurice Dantec’s books.

Kassovitz established the film production firm MNP Entreprise in 2000 “to develop and produce feature films by Kassovitz and to represent him as a director and actor. MNP Entreprise is responsible for the co-productions of a number of films including Avida (2006) in which Kassovitz acts and Babylon A.D. which he directed. Kassovitz purchased the film rights for the novel Johnny Mad Dog by Congolese writer Emmanuel Dongala. The film was also co-produced by MNP Entreprise, and directed by Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire.

The premiere of the film was made at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival where it was screened within the Un Certain Regard section.

BIO Born: August 3, 1967 in Paris, France

director

In November 2005, riots spread throughout suburbs of Paris following the deaths of two teenagers of North African descent, who were accidentally electrocuted while avoiding police ID checks and questioning. The question of whether young men were victims of racial discrimination set off a chain reaction of violence in schools, gyms, and police stations, and an aggressive response from then Home Office Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. Sarkozy stirred controversy and outrage when he said the rioters were “scum” and should be “cleansed” from the banlieues (suburbs) with a “fire hose”.

Kassovitz, whose film La haine ten years earlier had first highlighted the tensions between police and suburbs population, and stirred national dialogue, publicly responded to Sarkozy via his blog. He took the minister to task, saying that Sarkozy held “ideas that not only reveal his inexperience of politics and human relations, but which also illuminate the purely demagogical and egocentric aspects of a puny, would-be Napoleon.

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characters

Vincent Cassel Vincent Cassel (; born 23 November 1966) is a Cesar award winning French actor probably best known to English-speaking audiences through his performances in the Ocean’s Trilogy of films and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan.

Cassel was born Vincent Crochon in Paris, France, to Sabine Litique, a journalist, and French actor Jean-Pierre Cassel (born Jean-Pierre Crochon). He is married to Italian actress Monica Bellucci, with whom he has two daughters, Deva (born September 12, 2004) and Léonie (born 21 May 2010). His brother Mathias is a rapper with the group Assassin under the name “Rockin’ Squat”. His half-sister, Cécile Cassel, is an actress. He has a passion for Capoeira and displayed his talent in the movie Ocean’s Twelve. Besides his native French language, Cassel speaks English, Portuguese, and Italian.

He learned basic conversational Russian for his role in Eastern Promises.

Hubert koundÉ Hubert Koundé (born December 30, 1970) is a French actor and film director. Koundé is best known for his role as Hubert in the film La Haine by Mathieu Kassovitz. He is also the author of a play: “Cagoule: Valentine and Yamina,” performed in 2003 (Cagoule: Valentin et Yamina, montée en 2003). He made two short films: Qui se ressemble s’assemble and Menhir, and co-directed a feature film: Paris, la métisse. He has also worked on English language films such as The Constant Gardener.

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saÏd Taghmaoui Saïd Taghmaoui (born July 19, 1973) is a French actor and screenwriter. One of his defining screen roles was that of Saïd in the award-winning 1995 French film La Haine directed by Mathieu Kassovitz. Saïd has also appeared in a number of English-language films, with roles such as the Iraqi interrogator Captain ‘My Main Man’ Saïd in Three Kings, and as “Omar” in the 2008 thriller Traitor.

Taghmaoui was born in the Parisian suburb of Sevran, into a large family of nine siblings. His parents were Moroccan immigrants of Berber ancestry. Taghmaoui grew up in Aulnay-sous-Bois, in the quartier Rose des Vents. He dropped out of school to become a boxer and rose as high as number 2 in his weight class in France.

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THE plot

The film depicts approximately 19 consecutive hours in the lives of three friends in their early twenties from immigrant families living in an impoverished multi-ethnic French housing project (a ZUP - zone d’urbanisation prioritaire) in the suburbs of Paris, in the aftermath of a riot. Vinz (Vincent Cassel), who is Jewish, is filled with rage. He sees himself as a gangster ready to win respect by killing a cop, manically practising the role of Travis Bickle from the film Taxi Driver in the mirror secretly.

His attitude towards police, for instance, is a simplified, stylized blanket condemnation, even to individual policemen who make an effort to steer the trio clear of troublesome situations. Hubert (Hubert Koundé) is an Afro-French boxer and small time drug dealer, the most mature of the three, whose gymnasium was burned in the riots. The quietest, most thoughtful and wisest of the three, he sadly contemplates the ghetto and the hate around him. He expresses the wish to simply leave this decadent world of violence and hate behind him, but does not know how since he lacks the means to do so. Saïd - Sayid in some English subtitles - (Saïd Taghmaoui) is a Maghrebin who inhabits the middle ground between his two friends’ responses to their place in life.

A friend of theirs, Abdel Ichaha, has been brutalized by the police shortly before the riot and lies in a coma. Vinz finds a policeman’s .44 Magnum revolver, lost in the riot. He vows that if their friend dies from his injuries, he will use it to kill a cop, and when he hears of Abdel’s death he fantasizes carrying out his vengeance.

The three go through an aimless daily routine and struggle to entertain themselves, frequently finding themselves under police scrutiny. They take a train to Paris but encounter many of the same frustrations, and their responses to interactions with both benign and malicious Parisians cause several situations to degenerate to dangerous hostility. A run-in with sadistic plainclothes police, during which SaĂŻd and Hubert are humiliated and physically abused, results in their missing the last train home and spending the night on the streets.

They go to a roof-top from which they insult skinheads and policemen, before later encountering the same group of racist antiimmigrant skinheads who begin to beat Sa誰d and Hubert savagely, now that the balance of power has shifted. Vinz suddenly arrives, and his gun allows him to break up the fight; all the skinheads flee except one (portrayed by Kassovitz himself) whom Vinz is about to execute in cold blood. His dream of revenge is thwarted by his reluctance to go through with the deed, and, cleverly goaded

by Hubert.

He is forced to confront the fact that his true nature is not the heartless gangster he poses as, and he lets the skinhead flee.

Early in the morning, the trio return to the banlieue and split up to their separate homes, and Vinz turns the gun over to Hubert.

However, Vinz and Saïd encounter a plainclothes policeman, whom Vinz had insulted earlier in the day whilst with his friends on a local rooftop. The policeman grabs and threatens Vinz, making reference to the earlier incident on the roof. Hubert rushes to their aid, but as the policeman holding Vinz taunts him with a loaded gun held to Vinz’s head, the gun accidentally goes off, killing Vinz instantly.

Hubert and the policeman slowly and deliberately point their guns at each other, and as the film cuts to Saïd closing his eyes and cuts to black, a shot is heard on the soundtrack, with no indication of who fired or who may have been hit. This stand-off is underlined by a voice-over of Hubert’s slightly modified opening lines (“It’s about a society in free fall...”), underlining the fact that, as the lines say, jusqu’ici tout va bien (so far so good); i.e. all seems to be going relatively well until Vinz is killed, and from there no one knows what will happen, a microcosm of French society’s descent through hostility into pointless violence.

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2

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part two

DEFINITION

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Banlieues Banlieues are the “outskirts” of a city: the zone around a city that is not necessarily under the city’s jurisdiction.

Banlieues are translated as “suburbs”, as these are also residential areas on the outer edge of a city, but the connotations of the term “banlieue” in France can be different from those in English-speaking countries. The “suburbs” in the United States, for instance, are generally associated with low population density, detached or semi-detached housing and middle and upper class inhabitants.

In France banlieues are more frequently areas of low-income apartments and social housing. Thus, the equivalent of most housing in the banlieues in the United States would be “the projects”. In the UK, the equivalent would be a “council estate”.

Banlieues do include single-family home neighborhoods known as quartiers pavillonnaires. And just like the city centre or the city at the core of an urban area, banlieues may be rich, middle-class or poor; Versailles, Le Vésinet, Maisons-Laffitte and Neuilly-sur-Seine are affluent banlieues of Paris, while Clichy-sous-Bois, Bondy and Corbeil-Essonnes are some poor ones.

social housing in france France has a long tradition of state intervention[neutrality is disputed] in the housing market. After World War 2, the population increased at a rate previously unknown, the rural exodus increased, while war damage had reduced the number of houses in many cities. Rental prices dramatically rose, and the government made a law in 1949 to block them, effectively ending the economic benefits of housing investment. Additionally, construction was heavily regulated which made building difficult without political support.

The government launched a major construction plan, including the creation of new towns (“villes nouvelles”) and new suburbs with HLM (Habitation à Loyer Modéré, “low-rent housing”). The state had the funds and the legal means to acquire the land and could provide some advantages to the companies that built its huge housing complexes of hundreds of apartments. Quality was also effectively regulated, resulting in decent or even top quality housing for the standard of the 1950s and 1960s. The construction of HLMs were subject to much political debate.

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HLM construction was also a major (and illegal) source of political financing: building companies had to pay back the political party of the mayor that launched an HLM program. This resulted in corruption and some scandals.

France still retains this system, a recent law making it an obligation for every town to have at least 20% HLM. Nowadays HLM represents roughly half of the rental market (46% in 2006).

While they succeeded in giving lower-income families a place to live, this system also led to the creation of suburban ghettos. There, deprived strata of the population, mostly of immigrant origin and suffering massive under-employment, were left to simmer away from the gentrified urban centres, sometimes becoming rife with social tensions and violence. Tackling this problem at its roots is all but simple, with a lack of success despite many plans, so that a blind “law-and-order� attitude is now common in French internal politics, with few effective results and violent symptoms.

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In France, since the establishment of the Third Republic at the beginning of the 1870s, communities beyond the city centre essentially stopped spreading their own boundaries, as a result of the extension of the larger Paris urban agglomeration. The city—which in France corresponds to the concept of the “Urban unit” – does not necessarily have a correspondence with a single administrative location, and instead includes other communities that link themselves to the city centre and form the banlieues.

Since annexing (rather than incorporating) the banlieues of major French cities during the Second Empire period (Lyon in 1852, Lille in 1858, Paris in 1860, Bordeaux in 1865), the French communities have in effect extended their boundaries very little beyond their delimitations, and have not followed the development of the urban unit existing prior to 1870 as well as almost all large and mid-sized cities in France having a banlieue develop a Couronne periurbaine (in English: near-urban ring).

Communities in the countryside beyond the near-urban ring are regarded as being outside of the city’s strongest social and economic sphere of influence, and are termed Communes périurbaines. In either case, they are divided into numerous autonomous administrative entities.

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History

Geography of the banlieues Middle-class and upper-class residents essentially live in the West of the city, while the North East has a concentration of residents who are immigrants and who live in poverty.

The word banlieue is, in formal use, a socially neutral term, designating the urbanized zone located around the city centre, comprising both sparsely and heavily populated areas. Therefore, in the Parisian metropolitan area, for example, Neuilly-sur-Seine may be referred to as a banlieue the same as La Courneuve. To distinguish them, Parisians refer to a banlieue aisĂŠe (in English: comfortable suburb) for Neuilly, and to a banlieue dĂŠfavorisĂŠe (in English: disadvantaged suburb) for Clichy-sous-Bois.

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Lyon and Marseilles The banlieues of large cities like Lyon and Marseilles, but especially the Parisian banlieues (where there are 8 million residents), are severely criticized and forgotten by the country’s territorial spacial planning administration. Ever since the French Commune government of 1871, they were and are still often ostracised, considered by other residents as places that are “lawless” or “outside the law”, “outside the Republic”, as opposed to “deep France”, or “authentic France” associated with the countryside.

However, it is in the banlieues that the young working households are found, that raise children and pay taxes, yet are cruelly lacking in public services, in transportation, education, sports, as well as employment opportunities.

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The term banlieue itself comes from the two French words ban and lieue. “league�, roughly four kilometers, The old French term for suburb was faubourg.

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Paris The Paris region can be divided into several zones. In the NorthWest and the North-East, many areas are vestiges of former working-class and industrial zones, in the case of Seine-SaintDenis and Val-d’Oise. In the West, the population is generally Middle Class, and the centre of business and finace, La Défense, is also located there.

The South-East banlieues are less homogenous. Close to Paris, there are many communities that are considered “sensitive” or unsafe (Bagneux, Malakoff, Massy, Les Ulis), divided by residential zones with a better reputation (Verrières-le-Buisson, Bourg-laReine, Antony, Fontenay-aux-Roses, Sceaux).

Small communities that are socially disparate can be found in Yvelines with Villennes-sur-Seine, Chatou, Croissy-sur-Seine, Le Pecq, Maisons-Laffitte, but also in Essonne and Seine-et-Marne: Etiolles, Draveil, Soisy-sur-Seine, Saint-Pierre-du-Perray or Seine-Port. The social divide occurs on both sides of the Seine.

On the other hand, there are commuter areas where residents are comfortable: Bièvre and Chevreuse.

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zones

Crime in the banlieue Since the 1980s, petty crime has increased in France, much of it blamed on juvenile delinquency fostered within the banlieues.

As a result, the banlieues are perceived to have become unsafe places to live, and youths from the banlieues are perceived to be one important source of increased petty crimes and uncivil behaviour. As a result of this criminality, the Front National, a farright political party led by Jean-Marie Le Pen rose to prominence during the early 1990s on a platform of tougher law enforcement and immigration control.

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1981 riots

In the summer of 1981, dramatic events involving young FrancoMaghrebis brought about many different reactions from the French

public. Within the Banlieues, events called rodeos would occur, where young “banlieusards� would steal cars and perform stunts as well as race them. Then, before the police could catch them, they would abandon the cars and set them on fire.

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During July and August 1981, around 250 cars were vandalized.

Shortly after this incident, grass-roots groups began to demonstrate in public in 1983–1984 to publicise the problems of the Beurs and immigrants in France. In doing so, Arabs — specifically Algerians, Moroccans, Tunisians, and Berbers — in France began to develop a stronger identity unified by the problems that have been imposed on them economically and politically. The banlieue became a unifying point for the marginalized immigrants of France, despite the fact that there are various identities that constitute these individual groups. “We don’t consider ourselves completely French...Our parents were Arabs...We were born in France (and only visited Algeria a few times)...So what are we? French? Arab? In the eyes of the French we are Arabs...but when we visit Algeria some people call us immigrants and say we’ve rejected our culture. We’ve even had stones thrown at us.” Overall the displacement of identities that Franco Maghrebis feel becomes a unifying factor in French society and assimilation is particularly difficult because of their placement in the banlieue, and the French’s refusal to assimilate due to the violence portrayed at events such as in the summer of 1981.

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2005 riots

The 2005 civil unrest in France of October and November (in French Les ĂŠmeutes des banlieues de 2005) was a series of riots by mostly French youths of North African

origins in the suburbs of Paris and other French cities, involving mainly the burning of cars and public buildings at night starting on 27 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois. Events spread to poor housing projects (the citĂŠs HLM) in various parts of France. A state of emergency was declared on 8 November 2005. It was extended for three months on 16 November by the Parliament.

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triggering event Citing two police investigations, The New York Times reported that the incident began at 17:20 on Thursday, 27 October 2005 in Clichy-sous-Bois when police were called to a construction site to investigate a possible break-in. Three teenagers, thinking they were being chased by the police, climbed a wall to hide in a power substation. Six youths were detained by 17:50. During questioning at the police station in Livry-Gargan at 18:12, blackouts occurred at the station and in nearby areas. These were caused, police say, by the electrocution of two boys, Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré; a third boy, Muhittin Altun, suffered electric shock injury from the power substation they were hiding in.

“According to statements by Mr. Altun, who remains hospitalized with injuries, a group of ten or so friends had been playing football on a nearby field and were returning home when they saw the police patrol. They all fled in different directions to avoid the lengthy questioning that youths in the housing projects say they often face from the police. They say they are required to present identity papers and can be held as long as four hours at the police station, and sometimes their parents must come before the police will release them.” - NY Times

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There is controversy over whether the teens were actually being chased. The local prosecutor, François Molins, said that although they believed so, the police were actually after other suspects attempting to avoid an identity check. Molins and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy maintained that the dead teenagers had not been “physically pursued” by the police. This is disputed by some: The Australian reports, “Despite denials by police officials and Sarkozy and de Villepin, friends of the boys said they were being pursued by police after a false accusation of burglary and that they “feared interrogation”.

This event ignited pre-existing tensions. Protesters told The Associated Press the unrest was an expression of frustration with high unemployment and police harassment and brutality. “People are joining together to say we’ve had enough”, said one protester. “We live in ghettos. Everyone lives in fear.” The rioters’ suburbs are also home to a large, mostly North African, immigrant population, allegedly adding religious tensions, which some right-wing commentators believed contribute further to such frustrations. However, according to Pascal Mailhos, head of the Renseignements Généraux (French intelligence agency) radical Islamism had no influence over the 2005 civil unrest in France.

“Baise la

a police�

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Social situation in the French suburbs The word banlieue, which is French for “suburb,” does not necessarily refer to an environment of social disenfranchisement.

Indeed there exist many wealthy suburbs, such as Neuilly-sur-Seine (the wealthiest commune of France) and Versailles outside Paris.

Nevertheless, the term banlieues has often been used to describe troubled suburban communities—those with high unemployment, high crime rates, and frequently, a high proportion of residents of foreign origin.

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The rebuilding of France after World War II

The destruction of World War II, coupled with an increase in the country’s population (due both to immigration and natural increase) left France with a severe housing shortage. During the 1950s, shantytowns (bidonvilles) developed on the outskirts of major cities. During the winter of 1954, popular priest Abbé Pierre urged the government to work on behalf of the country’s large homeless population. To relieve the shortage, and end the practice of illegal squatting in public places, the governments of the Fourth and early Fifth Republics began the construction of huge housing projects.

These included the villes nouvelles (“New towns”) of Sarcelles, Cergy-Pontoise, Marne-la-Vallée and Sénart. These were financed in part by the Marshall Plan, and organized through central planning, fixing industrial objectives to meet (Dirigisme). The villes nouvelles owe much to Le Corbusier’s architectural theories, which had been decried before the war.

During the Trente Glorieuses, a period of economic growth which lasted from the war’s end until the 1973 oil crisis, and was accompanied by the baby boom, the French state and industrials encouraged immigration of young workers from the former colonies, mostly from the Maghreb, to help fill labor shortages.

In 1962, upon the conclusion of the Algerian War 900,000 piedsnoirs (the European colons in Algeria) were repatriated to France, as well as most of the 91,000 Harkis (native Algerians who fought with the French army during the war). The latter were put in internment camps, while the pieds-noirs settled mainly in the south of France. The city of Montpellier experienced population growth of 40% between 1960 and 1970, etc.). Harkis were not officially given permission to migrate, but some French military officers helped facilitate their migration to France in order to save them from certain reprisals in Algeria. After being freed from the internment camps, many harkis went on to live alongside other Algerian and Maghrebin immigrants in shantytowns. In 1963, 43% of French Algerians lived in shantytowns. Azouz Begag, Delegate Minister for Equal Opportunities in the government of former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin (UMP), has written an autobiographic novel, Le Gone du Chaâba, describing his experience living in a shantytown on the outskirts of Lyon.

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Model of urban development

The vast new apartment blocks, or flats, were at first chiefly inhabited by members of the middle class. As the housing situation improved, most middle-class residents moved to better houses and immigrants left the shantytowns for the blocks. The blocks are termed “HLM” — habitation à loyer modéré (“moderated rent flats”), and districts of blocks are termed cités (housing estates). A popular urban planning concept at this time, popularized by Le Corbusier, a Swiss architect, was to separate areas of towns or cities according to several functions: living center (blocks), commercial center and working center, with the centers being connected by buses. This led to the isolation of the living centers, with two consequences:

There was little activity at night and on Sunday, aggravated by the fact that bus transit to the central cities was limited;

When unemployment started to rise in the late 1970s, the children did not see anybody working, as the working center was far away; in the 1990s, a lot of school-age children never saw their parents going to work, and never saw anyone working.

This model became increasingly contested; in the 1990s there were a number of demolitions of housing facilities in “inhumane” areas.

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Some towns refused to build social buildings, leaving the poor further concentrated in certain towns which placed no or few restrictions on the construction of social housing. An example is the city of Paris: when old buildings were destroyed, only office and high-rent apartment buildings were constructed in their place, preventing the poor from settling in those neighborhoods.

Most were forced to live in the northern suburbs (chiefly in the Seine-Saint-Denis and Val d’oise departments). In The Global City (2001), Saskia Sassen has analyzed the relationship between a new economic model and the shape of modern cities. The public services offered (number of police officers, post offices, etc.) did not follow the tremendous increase of the population in these areas. This phenomenon has been termed “ghettoisation.”

The 13 December 2000 “SRU law” (loi de solidarité et renouvellement urbain, “solidarity and urban renewal act”), required that communes devote at least 20% of their housing capacity to social housing. Many locally-elected officials opposed the law, which sought to relieve residential segregation that had developed as a consequence of the earlier, uneven construction of the cités. In the wealthy Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine, of which President Nicolas Sarkozy served as mayor from 1983–2002, less than 2.5% of its housing stock meets the social-housing criteria. After the 2005 riots, the government announced that it would enforce the SRU law more strictly, although it would accommodate local circumstances such as the absence of land on which social housing could be built.

paris

Confrontation of cultures

The children of immigrants often feel torn between the culture of their parents and the culture they have grown up in. Many may feel themselves fully belonging to neither one.

A typical illustration of this is the use by some members of the French media of the words “second-generation immigrants” (immigrés de deuxième génération, opposed to “just arrived”, primo-arrivants). If a child is born in France, he is not an immigrant, so the expression “second-generation immigrants” is a misnomer.

According to anti-racist associations such as SOS Racisme, this reflects the ambiguity of the administration, who consider these people to be both French and foreign at the same time. Children of immigrants also complain about the use of the term “integration” (intégration): the integration in the society (i.e. the acceptance of the laws and customs of the adoptive country) is a necessity for a foreigner; but for someone that has been born and raised in the country, it is improper to ask them to “integrate” into it.

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income As in every country, some areas have a very high unemployment rate. As the social security, unemployment and other welfare system benefits are not indefinite, and are predicated upon having had a job at one point, families with no paid income do not benefit from the usually generous French social security system. In addition, the amount and duration are based on length of employment and the specific employment contract, further disadvantaging the unskilled immigrants in the banlieues. Welfare benefits include housing benefits and allocations familiales (welfare benefits for children). The sum that is paid to a non-working family is similar to that which one would receive working at a minimum wage part-time job. In France, there is a minimum salary called the SMIC: salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance. This is the minimal interprofessional wage which follows the economic growth of the country. It is illegal to hire someone for less than it. In 2005, the SMIC was 8.86 EUR per hour, 1,217.88 EUR per month for a fulltime job. However, even the wage of a full-time unqualified job is often insufficient for the lifestyles of many people.

Housing costs If a family has fewer than three children, it will usually receive financial aid in the form of Aide PersonnalisĂŠe au Logement (APL), personalised accommodation help), which is calculated according to the global revenue of the household, and can account for as much as a third or even a half of the rent amount. If the family has three or more children it is not eligible for APL, but receives allocation familiales (family allowance), the amount of which depends on both the revenue of the household and the number of children, but it is not linear (the difference in the allocation between three and four children is higher than that between five and six, for example).

The money is paid to the household, not individually. The housing projects are not rent-free, but are relatively inexpensive, and there tends to be an abundance of cheap rental accommodation in the zones sensibles (sensitive urban zone).

Health care costs In France, the costs of seeing a doctor and obtaining medicine are at least partially refunded by the government, with the proportion varying between 30% and 100%. Low-income families receive CMU (Couverture maladie universelle - universal health allowance), a law voted in 1997 by Lionel Jospin’s Plural Left government, meaning that not only 100% of the cost of medical expenses is paid for, but also that it is not necessary to pay up front for service. The CMU, however, only applies to very poor families. Those in higher income brackets must pay initially and then apply for reimbursement.

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part three

brutalist architecture

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brutalist architecture

93 Brutalist architecture is a style of architecture that flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, spawned from the modernist architectural movement. Examples are typically very linear, fortresslike and blockish, often with a predominance of concrete construction. Initially the style came about for government buildings, low-rent housing and shopping centres to create functional structures at a low cost, but eventually designers adopted the look for other uses such as college buildings.

Critics of the style find it unappealing due to its “cold” appearance, projecting an atmosphere of totalitarianism, as well as the association of the buildings with urban decay due to materials weathering poorly in certain climates and the surfaces being prone to vandalism by graffiti. Despite this, the style is appreciated by others, with some of the angular features being softened and updated in buildings currently being constructed in Israel and Latin America, and preservation efforts are taking place in the United Kingdom.

The English architects Alison and Peter Smithson coined the term in 1953, from the French béton brut, or “raw concrete”, a phrase used by Le Corbusier to describe the poured board-marked concrete with which he constructed many of his post-World War II buildings. The term gained wide currency when the British architectural critic Reyner Banham used it in the title of his 1966 book, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic?, to characterise a somewhat recently established cluster of architectural approaches, particularly in Europe.

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Characteristics Brutalist buildings usually are formed with striking repetitive angular geometries, and, where concrete is used, often revealing the texture of the wooden forms used for the in-situ casting.

Although concrete is the material most widely associated with Brutalist architecture, not all Brutalist buildings are formed from concrete. Instead, a building may achieve its Brutalist quality through a rough, blocky appearance, and the expression of its structural materials, forms, and (in some cases) services on its exterior. For example, many of Alison and Peter Smithson’s private houses are built from brick. Brutalist building materials also include brick, glass, steel, rough-hewn stone, and gabions.

Conversely, not all buildings exhibiting an exposed concrete exterior can be considered Brutalist, and may belong to one of a range of architectural styles including Constructivism, International Style, Expressionism, Postmodernism, and Deconstructivism.

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Another common theme in Brutalist designs is the exposure of the building’s functions—ranging from their structure and services to their human use—in the exterior of the building. In the Boston City Hall, designed in 1962, the strikingly different and projected portions of the building indicate the special nature of the rooms behind those walls, such as the mayor’s office or the city council chambers. From another perspective, the design of the Hunstanton School included placing the facility’s water tank, normally a hidden service feature, in a prominent, visible tower.

Brutalism as an architectural philosophy, rather than a style, was often also associated with a socialist utopian ideology, which tended to be supported by its designers, especially Alison and Peter Smithson, near the height of the style. Critics argue that this abstract nature of Brutalism makes the style unfriendly and uncommunicative, instead of being integrating and protective, as its proponents intended. Brutalism also is criticised as disregarding the social, historic, and architectural environment of its surroundings, making the introduction of such structures in existing developed areas appear starkly out of place and alien. The failure of positive communities to form early on in some Brutalist structures, possibly due to the larger processes of urban decay that set in after World War II (especially in the United Kingdom), led to the combined unpopularity of both the ideology and the architectural style.

Bruta

alism

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History The best known early Brutalist architecture is the work of the French architect Le Corbusier, in particular his Unité d’Habitation (1952) and the 1953 Secretariat Building in Chandigarh, India.

Brutalism gained considerable momentum in the United Kingdom during the mid twentieth century, as economically depressed (and World War II-ravaged) communities sought inexpensive construction and design methods for low-cost housing, shopping centres, and government buildings. Nonetheless, many architects chose the Brutalist style even when they had large budgets, as they appreciated the ‘honesty’, the sculptural qualities, and perhaps, the uncompromising, anti-bourgeois, nature of the style.

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Combined with the socially progressive intentions behind Brutalist streets in the sky housings such as Corbusier’s UnitÊ, Brutalism was promoted as a positive option for forward-moving, modern urban housing. In practice, however, many of the buildings built in this style lacked many of the community-serving features of Corbusier’s vision, and instead, developed into claustrophobic, crime-ridden tenements. Robin Hood Gardens is a particularly notorious example, although the worst of its problems have been overcome in recent years. Some such buildings took decades to develop into positive communities. The rough coolness of concrete lost its appeal under a damp and grey northern sky, and its fortresslike material, touted as vandal-proof, soon proved vulnerable to spray-can graffiti.

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Figures In the United Kingdom, Architects associated with the Brutalist style include Erno Goldfinger, wife-and-husband pairing Alison and Peter Smithson, Richard Seifert, Basil Spence, John Bancroft and, to a lesser extent perhaps, Sir Denys Lasdun. In Australia, examples of the Brutalist style are Robin Gibson’s Queensland Art Gallery, Ken Woolley’s Fisher Library at the University of Sydney (his State Office Block is another, High Court of Australia by Colin Madigan in Canberra and WTC Wharf (World Trade Centre in Melbourne). John Andrews’s government and institutional structures in Australia also exhibit the style.

Paul Rudolph and Ralph Rapson, from the United States are both noted Brutalists. Walter Netsch is known for his Brutalist academic buildings (see above). Marcel Breuer was known for his “soft” approach to the style, often using curves rather than corners. Clorindo Testa in Argentina created the Bank of London and South America, one of the best examples of the fifties. More recent Modernists such as I.M. Pei and Tadao Ando also have designed notable Brutalist works. In Brazil, the style is associated with the Paulista School and is evident in the works of Pritzker Architecture Prize-winning architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha (2006).

In the Philippines, Leandro Locsin designed the massive brutalist structures, the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the Philippine International Convention Center. In New Zealand, Sir Miles Warren and his practice Warren & Mahoney led the development of the so-called “Christchurch School” of architecture, which fused Brutalist architectural style with Scandinavian and Japanese values of straightforwardness. Warren’s buildings have had a significant effect on New Zealand’s public architecture.

Architects whose work reflects certain aspects of the Brutalist style include Louis Kahn. Architectural historian William Jordy says that although Kahn was “[o]pposed to what he regarded as the muscular posturing of most Brutalism”, some of his work “was surely informed by some of the same ideas that came to momentary focus in the Brutalist position.

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key Figures

LE CORBUSIER Charles-Édouard Jeanneret, better known as Le Corbusier; October 6, 1887 – August 27, 1965), was an architect, designer, urbanist, writer, and one of the pioneers of what is now called modern architecture. He was born in Switzerland and became a French citizen in 1930. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout Europe, India, and America. He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. He was awarded the Frank P. Brown Medal and AIA Gold Medal in 1961.

Le Corbusier adopted his pseudonym in the 1920s, allegedly deriving it in part from the name of an ancestor, Lecorbésier.

109 He was born as Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris in La Chauxde-Fonds, a small city in Neuchâtel canton in north-western Switzerland, in the Jura mountains, just 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) across the border from France. He attended a kindergarten that used Fröbelian methods.

Young Jeanneret was attracted to the visual arts and studied at the La-Chaux-de-Fonds Art School under Charles L’Eplattenier, who had studied in Budapest and Paris. His architecture teacher in the Art School was the architect René Chapallaz, who had a large influence on Le Corbusier’s earliest house designs.

In his early years he would frequently escape the somewhat provincial atmosphere of his hometown by traveling around Europe.

In around 1907 he travelled to Paris, where he found work in the office of Auguste Perret, the French pioneer of reinforced concrete.

In 1908, he studied architecture in Vienna with Josef Hoffmann.

Between October 1910 and March 1911, he worked near Berlin for the renowned architect Peter Behrens, where he may have met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. He became fluent in German. Both of these experiences would prove influential in his later career.

Later in 1911, he journeyed to the Balkans and visited Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey, filling sketchbooks with renderings of what he saw—including many sketches of the Parthenon, whose forms he would later praise in his work Vers une architecture (1923) (“Towards an Architecture”, but usually translated into English as “Towards a New Architecture”).

“A house is a machine for living in� le Corbusier

Concrete

The history of concrete

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The actual date from which early, lime-based concrete was first used is unknown. The Roman architect Vitruvius documented the use of a mixture of mortar and small stones in 13 B.C. and it is known that the Egyptians used a form of concrete in around 2500 BC. In 1985 archaeological excavations discovered an early form of concrete in Yiftah El in Galilee, Israel dating from around 7000 B.C.

Lime-based concrete was used throughout the ancient world where the raw materials were readily available. Although it was often used as infill material for masonry structures due to its comparatively slow hardening and low strength, it was also used for structures such as aqueducts, foundations, walls, bridges and hydraulic structures. The Pantheon (see right-hand photograph) in Rome has a coffered dome in an early form of concrete. The Colosseum, also in Rome is another example of an ancient structure using an early form of poured mass concrete. Romans acknowledged the importance of thorough mixing and compaction, and that a high ‘cement’ content did not guarantee a good quality, strong material.

Early concrete typically consisted of fragments of stone such as peperino (grey tuff), pumice, marble or broken bricks with a lime (calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2) mix. Lime (calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2) is produced when limestone (calcium carbonate, CaO3) is burnt at around 800 degrees Celsius, although this specific temperature was not realised until the early nineteenth century. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is then driven off to leave quicklime (calcium oxide, CaO). When combined with water, quicklime reacts vigorously to produce lime.

In Ancient Rome, slaked lime (calcium hydroxide, Ca(OH)2) acted as the binder and was typically combined with pozzalana, and water to form a cement, and with aggregate to form a concrete, with the ability to set under water. Pozzalana, a sandy volcanic ash from Pozzuoli, near Mount Vesuvius, gave lime concrete a higher strength following a reaction between the constituents of the sand, the lime and the water. Some of the earliest surviving examples of pozzalana concrete are roofs of Roman baths in Pompeii dating from around the second century BC. In Greece, the volcanic tuff, Santorin earth, was used instead of pozzalana. The Greeks and Romans were both aware of the hydraulicity of cement and concrete. The term ‘pozzalana’ now refers to all materials which undergo a cementitous reaction with lime and water.

Lime-based cement and concrete were used intermittently in the centuries preceding the Roman period, but was typically of poorer quality until around the fourteenth century. During this time much of the Roman knowledge of producing good quality lime-based cements and concrete was lost.

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The Evolution of Modern Concrete The experiments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were instrumental to the development and evolution of concrete as a building material but also to our understanding of the chemical reaction that occurs throughout the production of the material, and of the behaviour of the material in use.

As previously mentioned, early concretes were used by the Greeks and Romans, and intermittently through the preceding centuries until around the fourteenth century. Despite this early use, the application and development of the material did not occur until the eighteenth century. The lack of interest in concrete has been attributed to the lack of ordinary lime and, perhaps more significantly, social attitude: ashlar was considered the material to use for a better building. Interest in concrete grew as the cost of stone increased, as stucco became fashionable and as awareness of the use and benefits of the concrete increased.

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Although the term ‘concrete’ is thought to have been in existence since the fifteenth century, it was from this essay that the modern meaning of concrete was founded, based on the application of the term over the preceding 20 years. By the 1850s, the term ‘concrete’ was accepted to mean a material comprising of cement, aggregate and water, mixed together and poured into the required position. At this time concrete was typically used for foundations. In 1840 Alfred Bartholomew (1801 - 1845) commented on this essay, saying:

...perhaps the only parts that should be erased from it, are the venturesome opinions relative to extending the use of ‘concrete’ to the purposes of building above ground... A careful examination, will discover, that in every instance in which ‘concrete’ walls have been used, more or less instant ruin has occurred.

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In the early nineteenth century concrete had three principal applications:

Mortars and Renders

Precast

From the mid-nineteenth century concrete continued to be applied in the same way. However, not only was there an increase in cast in-situ construction techniques but there was an increase in the use of metal reinforcement. Its fireproof property made concrete popular as a material for structures, particularly from 1844 for flooring systems. Concrete’s fireproof property made its use on structures such as theatres appealing, where the risk of fire was high. The Palace Theatre, previously known as the Royal English Opera House, had concrete specified for tiers, corridors, staircases and landings (constructed from 1888).

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, there was a lack of technical knowledge in the design and application of concrete which led to the rapid deterioration of some structures, and inherent defects in others. For example, fireproof flooring systems and other concrete mixes could have a variety of material specified, including coke breeze (from gas and manufacturing plants), cinders, crushed and broken bricks. Although concrete design in the nineteenth century was typically on the conservative side, experimentation in the former half of the twentieth century has seen issues that including inadequate concrete coverage to reinforcement, concrete mixes that led to increased carbonation or corrosion, and an abandonment of weathering details.

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a book about a film

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yasseen faik

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