Rocio Calzado: Beyond Demolition: The Socio-Technical Transformation of Large Housing Estates

My PhD thesis explores the history of seven social housing blocks situated along the Paris ring road, from Porte Pouchet to Porte des Poissonniers. The architect Raymond Lopez designed these blocks in the 1960s as part of a joint urban development initiative, Sector 8, using the same architectural prototype for all seven buildings. However, these initial similarities are overshadowed by a striking disparity in the fate that Lopez’s towers have met over the 60 years since their construction. Some have been demolished, others converted and refurbished. Currently, the Tour Poissonniers, which was initially threatened with demolition, is undergoing renovation. The contrasting fates of the seven towers reveal the story of a remarkable paradigm shift in the field of urban regeneration, replacing the old paradigm of social housing demolition with that of transformation. This thesis explores this shift by examining how architecture, urban planning and local policy have interacted in resolving a problem with such significant social and ecological impact.

My research project will examine the correlation between the development of new social housing regeneration programmes with strong environmental ambitions and the obsolescence of various parts of the building, as well as its maintenance protocols. The study takes the seven Lopez tower blocks as its case study, in order to trace the paradigm shift from demolition to regeneration. To analyse this, the project combines a more traditional policy study of changes in the instruments used for the production and management of social housing with a micro-analysis of the various parts of these seven tower blocks in their physical dimension. This micro-analysis uses a socio-technical approach to study the interaction between the technical construction choices for the various elements of the tower and the evolution of daily life within the buildings. More specifically, the study will delve into the concept of component obsolescence and analyse the maintenance practices of the tower blocks.

The study aims to trace the role of architecture—and therefore of architects—in this shift, from the most basic cleaning practices right through to a large-scale cultural transformation in the management of 20th-century built heritage. The study approaches ecological transitions as a process that must be examined not only through a belief in innovation, but also through an analysis of the impact on everyday practices.

One chapter of this thesis will compare this change of direction regarding the Tour des Poissonniers—which was originally slated for demolition but managed to avoid it—with Corviale, a housing estate in Rome that suffered the same fate and is currently undergoing regeneration with funding from the NGEU[1]. The conclusions of this thesis aim not only to trace this change of course within the French context, but also to extend it to the European context, thereby contributing to a comparative socio-history of the historical production of social housing in Europe, the role of architecture, and a continental response to climate change. This ambition aligns with a personal journey across different countries, and with the conviction, through the combination of architecture and political science, that the intersection of disciplines opens up new avenues in the transition of our urban environments.

[1] European funding programme – Next Generations EU