Say no to the demolition of this major building
by the Perret brothers!
Send your name / first name / position / city / country
Les bâtiments de la Marine nationale (1928-1956, Paris, 15e) sont menacés de destruction en raison d'un vaste projet du Ministère de la Défense. Un permis de démolir a été demandé sans qu’aucune expertise préalable n’ait été engagée.
Or il s'agit d'une oeuvre exceptionnelle, tant par la qualité de son architecture, que par la position qu’elle occupe dans la trajectoire des frères Perret. Elle représente une étape décisive dans l’élaboration d’un ordre du béton armé. Sa disparition nous priverait d’un maillon essentiel pour comprendre un héritage déjà mutilé par la démolition du garage de la rue Ponthieu (1906) et des ateliers Esders (1919). Il serait lamentable qu’un ensemble dépendant directement de l’État subisse un sort analogue à celui qui vient d’être réservé, à Amiens, à une autre œuvre des frères Perret, la place de la gare, défigurée par des transformations grossières.
Les bâtiments de la Marine nationale doivent être protégés. Le dossier d’archives (l’un des plus riches du fonds Perret) témoigne de l’effervescence qui a accompagné la conception du projet. On peut, grâce à 2000 documents conservés, suivre les recherches qui ont abouti à cette œuvre savante.
Dans Le langage de l’architecture classique, John Summerson compare la Marine nationale à l’Opéra de Paris : "Le bâtiment est entièrement en béton armé et dépourvu de tout ornement. Mais il est pensé en termes d’ordres". "Il y a presque autant de relief et de variété, de rythme, dans ce bâtiment, que dans l’Opéra. Simplement, il n’y a ni moulure, ni sculpture". Peter Collins souligne la maîtrise de cet ensemble. Le soin accordé aux proportions, le jeu de l’ombre et de la lumière, la composition des bétons révèlent "quelque chose de plus profond que l’intelligente amélioration des éléments architectoniques essentiels. L’architecture industrielle est portée ici au degré le plus élevé de l’art".
Seul le bâtiment administratif est inscrit à l’inventaire. Les autres constructions vont disparaître. Démanteler un tel patrimoine pour n’en conserver que la partie administrative est inacceptable. Ce serait perdre les qualités d’harmonisation qui ont porté cette "architecture industrielle" à ce degré de dignité qu’ont su percevoir Summerson et Collins. Ce serait discréditer définitivement la politique de protection du patrimoine du XXe engagée par le Ministère de la Culture.
http://www.docomomo.com/PDF/Navy%20Headquarters%20by%20Perret,%20Paris.pdf
http://www.docomomo.com/news_heritage.htm
Friday, February 12, 2010
Heritage@Risk - Sanatorium Lemaire, Belgium
Severe Threat to Belgian Modernist Masterpiece:
Support Needed!
Sign the petition at http://www.redhetsanatorium.be/petition/index.htm
Some 19km from Brussels lays the Joseph Lemaire Sanatorium, a modernist masterpiece by the architects Maxime and Fernand Brunfaut. Both designers were closely linked with the socialist movement in the Interbellum period and played an important role in the introduction of the modernist principles in Belgian architectural culture. Before embarking on a successful personal career, Maxime Brunfaut was for a longtime Victor Horta’s principal assistant.
Just like Aalto’s famous Paimio Sanatorium and the celebrated Zonnestraal Sanatorium by Duiker and Blijvoet, the Lemaire sanatorium was conceived in a typically functionalist manner, providing a state of the art infrastructure for the cure of patients suffering from tuberculosis.
From its opening in 1937 on, the Lemaire Sanatorium attracted international attention from both the medical and architectural world who praised its functional organization, the fluid sequence of its interior spaces, the plastic articulation of the building mass and the detailing of the façades, clad with ceramic tiles. A remarkable invention is the block system.
After the building was disused in the late 1980s, it quickly fell pray to decay, vandalism and theft. Paradoxically, its listing as a historical monument in 1993 even stimulated this perishing as it led to a situation of immobility. Propositions for reuse of the structure as lofts, offices or an asylum for political refugees were aborted in an early stage. Despite its current ruinous state, the building continues to attract international attention from scholars, architects and photographers who are impressed by the strength of its forms and its interaction with the surrounding landscape.
More information on the sanatorium and petition
http://www.redhetsanatorium.be/petition/index.htm
Support Needed!
Sign the petition at http://www.redhetsanatorium.be/petition/index.htm
Some 19km from Brussels lays the Joseph Lemaire Sanatorium, a modernist masterpiece by the architects Maxime and Fernand Brunfaut. Both designers were closely linked with the socialist movement in the Interbellum period and played an important role in the introduction of the modernist principles in Belgian architectural culture. Before embarking on a successful personal career, Maxime Brunfaut was for a longtime Victor Horta’s principal assistant.
Just like Aalto’s famous Paimio Sanatorium and the celebrated Zonnestraal Sanatorium by Duiker and Blijvoet, the Lemaire sanatorium was conceived in a typically functionalist manner, providing a state of the art infrastructure for the cure of patients suffering from tuberculosis.
From its opening in 1937 on, the Lemaire Sanatorium attracted international attention from both the medical and architectural world who praised its functional organization, the fluid sequence of its interior spaces, the plastic articulation of the building mass and the detailing of the façades, clad with ceramic tiles. A remarkable invention is the block system.
After the building was disused in the late 1980s, it quickly fell pray to decay, vandalism and theft. Paradoxically, its listing as a historical monument in 1993 even stimulated this perishing as it led to a situation of immobility. Propositions for reuse of the structure as lofts, offices or an asylum for political refugees were aborted in an early stage. Despite its current ruinous state, the building continues to attract international attention from scholars, architects and photographers who are impressed by the strength of its forms and its interaction with the surrounding landscape.
More information on the sanatorium and petition
http://www.redhetsanatorium.be/petition/index.htm
Saturday, February 6, 2010
The Factory, The Paradigm Of Modernity / Фабриката - Парадигмата на модерността
VIIth Iberian DOCOMOMO Congress / IVth DOCOMOMO ISC Registers Seminar
Gijón, Asturias, Spain - 14-17 April 2010
Call for papers
The aim of the International Seminar to be held in Spain in 2010 is to reflect on the influence of technology on the emergence of modern-movement architecture and on the new view that would lead to change in the interpretations of all artistic experiences.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) initiated a line of thought which was inevitably destined to develop: that of the world of science as the object of philosophical reflection. At the same time, scientific and technical progress would consolidate, in practice, a new change in the interpretative values of Western culture.
In opposition to the world of nature that of the device would become consolidated, governed by the laws of technology, which would develop fully inside new architectural artefacts practically unknown until the nineteenth century. The factory, as a new architectural type, had come into being.
It would be in the factory, as a new expression of construction, that architecture developed one of the most specific manifestations of modernity, quickly travelling the distance that separated the steam engine from full industrialisation.
And not only architects, but also painters, sculptors, photographers and composers found in the world of technology and its container, the factory, a motive of inspiration and reflection on the scope of their respective artistic experiences. The film world, too, became trapped by its irrepressible lure, as Charles Chaplin ironically expressed in Modern Times.
In the construction of the factory new building techniques were developed as the expression of its utilitarian needs as well as of materials that had recently become available. Poets devoted many hours to its interpretation, while painters and sculptors modelled forms and used hitherto unknown expressive resources in an attempt to decipher the symbolism of technology.
The fascination that the factory generated has reached the present day. Its past splendour, now largely reduced to ruins, continues to attract our eye: having become thoroughly obsolete, factories nonetheless tell us not only of our past but also of some of the most meaningful concerns of our present. We project our gaze onto their ruins with deep nostalgia, melancholy and uncertainty, to the point where we are prepared to prolong their existence beyond their original use, now expired, to discover their new possibilities as leisure and cultural premises.
Reflect on your past reality and its potential for the future is thus the goal of the convening of this International Seminar. To order the Seminar, specifying the intent of lectures and conferences and taking into account the place of its conclusion, it is proposed to organize the whole of the work from a sectoral perspective. These take into account not only individual buildings but also its territorial integration, an issue that we consider crucial in order to assess both its architectural merits as intervention operations on them can be made. In this sense, we propose to confine the work, in addition to general reflections on, two specific productive sectors: coal-steel and Energy (thermal and hydro).
Schedule
February 22, 2010: Deadline for abstract submission (must not exceed 2100
characters)
February 26, 2010: Selection of abstracts by the scienti c committee
March 3, 2010: Notification of acceptance to the relevant authors
April 9, 2010: Deadline for submission of the final text of the papers
accepted (must not exceed 8 pages, 16800 characters, and 12 images)
April 14-17, 2010: Congress
The abstracts should be prepared according to the attached
template and will be submitted on line, by email, by registered mail
or by courier by 15:00 pm, February 22, 2010 to:
Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico
Plaça Nova 5, 3ª planta, 08002 Barcelona
Tel. 93 3067859 || email: fundacion@docomomoiberico.com
http://www.docomomoiberico.com/
Scientific Committee
Miguel Ángel Areces
João Viera Caldas
Celestino García Braña
Panayotis Tournikiotis
Speakers
Miguel Aguiló
Henri Bava
Jordi Borja
Sérgio Fernandez
Celestino García Braña
Piotr Gerber
Ana Tostões
Zaparij Vladimir V.
Panayotis Tournikiotis
Congress Secretariat
Algama, S.L.
Tlf. 984492462 Fax. 985171855
E-mail: docomomo7@coaa.es
Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Asturias
Marqués de Gastañaga, 3
33009 OVIEDO
Teléfono: 985 274 993 / 985 232 316
Fax: 985 273 946
Email: coaa@coaa.es
www.coaa.es
Gijón, Asturias, Spain - 14-17 April 2010
Call for papers
The aim of the International Seminar to be held in Spain in 2010 is to reflect on the influence of technology on the emergence of modern-movement architecture and on the new view that would lead to change in the interpretations of all artistic experiences.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) initiated a line of thought which was inevitably destined to develop: that of the world of science as the object of philosophical reflection. At the same time, scientific and technical progress would consolidate, in practice, a new change in the interpretative values of Western culture.
In opposition to the world of nature that of the device would become consolidated, governed by the laws of technology, which would develop fully inside new architectural artefacts practically unknown until the nineteenth century. The factory, as a new architectural type, had come into being.
It would be in the factory, as a new expression of construction, that architecture developed one of the most specific manifestations of modernity, quickly travelling the distance that separated the steam engine from full industrialisation.
And not only architects, but also painters, sculptors, photographers and composers found in the world of technology and its container, the factory, a motive of inspiration and reflection on the scope of their respective artistic experiences. The film world, too, became trapped by its irrepressible lure, as Charles Chaplin ironically expressed in Modern Times.
In the construction of the factory new building techniques were developed as the expression of its utilitarian needs as well as of materials that had recently become available. Poets devoted many hours to its interpretation, while painters and sculptors modelled forms and used hitherto unknown expressive resources in an attempt to decipher the symbolism of technology.
The fascination that the factory generated has reached the present day. Its past splendour, now largely reduced to ruins, continues to attract our eye: having become thoroughly obsolete, factories nonetheless tell us not only of our past but also of some of the most meaningful concerns of our present. We project our gaze onto their ruins with deep nostalgia, melancholy and uncertainty, to the point where we are prepared to prolong their existence beyond their original use, now expired, to discover their new possibilities as leisure and cultural premises.
Reflect on your past reality and its potential for the future is thus the goal of the convening of this International Seminar. To order the Seminar, specifying the intent of lectures and conferences and taking into account the place of its conclusion, it is proposed to organize the whole of the work from a sectoral perspective. These take into account not only individual buildings but also its territorial integration, an issue that we consider crucial in order to assess both its architectural merits as intervention operations on them can be made. In this sense, we propose to confine the work, in addition to general reflections on, two specific productive sectors: coal-steel and Energy (thermal and hydro).
Schedule
February 22, 2010: Deadline for abstract submission (must not exceed 2100
characters)
February 26, 2010: Selection of abstracts by the scienti c committee
March 3, 2010: Notification of acceptance to the relevant authors
April 9, 2010: Deadline for submission of the final text of the papers
accepted (must not exceed 8 pages, 16800 characters, and 12 images)
April 14-17, 2010: Congress
The abstracts should be prepared according to the attached
template and will be submitted on line, by email, by registered mail
or by courier by 15:00 pm, February 22, 2010 to:
Fundación DOCOMOMO Ibérico
Plaça Nova 5, 3ª planta, 08002 Barcelona
Tel. 93 3067859 || email: fundacion@docomomoiberico.com
http://www.docomomoiberico.com/
Scientific Committee
Miguel Ángel Areces
João Viera Caldas
Celestino García Braña
Panayotis Tournikiotis
Speakers
Miguel Aguiló
Henri Bava
Jordi Borja
Sérgio Fernandez
Celestino García Braña
Piotr Gerber
Ana Tostões
Zaparij Vladimir V.
Panayotis Tournikiotis
Congress Secretariat
Algama, S.L.
Tlf. 984492462 Fax. 985171855
E-mail: docomomo7@coaa.es
Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Asturias
Marqués de Gastañaga, 3
33009 OVIEDO
Teléfono: 985 274 993 / 985 232 316
Fax: 985 273 946
Email: coaa@coaa.es
www.coaa.es
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