Thesis supervisors: Jonathan Rutherford and Martine Drozdz
My thesis project explores the history of seven public housing towers located along the Paris ring road, from Porte Pouchet to Porte des Poissonniers. Architect Raymond Lopez designed these towers in the 1960s as part of a joint urban 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 of Lopez's towers in the 60 years since their construction. Some have been demolished, others transformed and rehabilitated. Currently, the Poissonniers Tower, which was initially threatened with demolition, is undergoing renovation. The disparate fates of the seven towers reveal the story of a remarkable paradigm shift in the urban renewal sector, replacing the old paradigm of demolishing social housing with that of transformation. This thesis explores this change by examining how architecture, urban planning, and local politics have been articulated in resolving an issue with such significant social and ecological impact.
My research project will focus on studying the correlation between the development of new social housing transformation programs with strong ecological ambitions and the obsolescence of different parts of the building as well as its maintenance protocols. The study takes the seven Lopez towers as a case study to trace the paradigm shift from demolition to transformation. To analyze this, the project combines a more traditional political study of changes in the instruments used for the production and management of social housing with a micro-analysis of the different parts of these seven towers in their physical dimension. This micro-analysis uses a socio-technical approach to study the interaction between the technical construction choices of the different elements of the tower and the evolution of daily life inside the buildings. More specifically, the study will delve into the concept of obsolescence of elements and analyze the maintenance practices of the towers.
The study aims to trace, from the smallest generic cleaning practice to a large-scale cultural change in the management of 20th-century built heritage, the role of architecture, and therefore architects, in this change. The study approaches ecological transitions as a process that must be studied not only from the perspective of belief in innovation, but also through analysis of the impact on everyday practices.
One chapter of this thesis will compare this change of direction for the Tour des Poissonniers, initially destined for demolition but which avoided it, with Corviale, a residential complex in Rome that suffered the same fate and is currently undergoing transformation with NGEU funding. The conclusions of this thesis aim not only to trace the change of direction in the French context, but also to extend it to the European context, thus 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 is in line with a personal journey between different countries and with the conviction, through the combination of architecture and political science, that the intersection of disciplines can open up new avenues in the transition of our urban environments.
[1] European funding program – Next Generations EU
Year of enrollment: 2023
Doctoral School: City, Transport, and Territories (VTT)