1.0708 - Saint-Georges
Pharo district, 7th district, city centre
Literature references: 20th century heritage, domestic architecture
X edition directory number: 0708, p12. 2005
Label Patrimoine du XXe siècle, 2006
Conception & writing T. Durousseau arch. 2007
designation: The Saint Georges
97 avenue de la Corse, rue Capitaine Dessemond, rue Charras, quartier du Pharo 13007
Lambert 3: latitude 3.02149; longitude 43.2888
Access: bus no. 54 Catalans - Saint-Pierre, no. 83: Joliette - rond-point du Prado
Owner: Syndicat des copropriétaires du Saint-Georges
Syndic Cabinet Stein Marseille, 04 96 20 72 07, Paul Stein
program: Complex mixed offices, church, school, shops, housing, conference room, hotel, panoramic restaurant (gone).
Contracting authority: Savoisiena.
Program of 222 housing units. Set of 7 cages (A to G). Car parking in basement.
dates, authors: Building Permits: 1959. Delivery: 1962.
Claude Gros, architect DPLG.
Company, La Savoisiena, builder developer.
site: Close to the Corniche, between the Place du 4 Septembre and the Catalans. Plot 4.7 ha originally. Land between 10.4 and 13.8 m (Place du 4 Septembre). Central sector of the Master Town Planning of 1949.
mass plane: The entire triangular urban islet is built entirely of a multi-story tablecloth containing the important elements of the program, above which emerges the building on the bank of Dessemond Street and the curved tower.
frame: The residential part is made up of apartments, with loggias to the south. The facade is made of regular bays with infill, the color has been changed several times. Good general condition.
sources: AD: 2071 W 12 (39.808, 39.809), 165 W 269, 150 J 110
Architecture Guide, Marseille, 1945-1993 : M.H. Biget, J. Sbriglio, Parentheses, 1993
Marseille magazine
Chamber of Commerce Review, Special No., 1959
Background:
Louis Cottin, founding president of La Savoisienne, promoted the Saint-Georges built on the grounds of a painting factory destroyed in 1944 and a church dedicated to Saint-Georges by his parish priest.
After the war, the rules of reconstruction allow the ceilings of current height to be exceeded for buildings demolished during the war (cf. Bel Horizon). The Pharo district was in the offing to become the building district: in 1952, an urban planning project by F. Pouillon included a group of towers. Today, there are high-rise buildings such as the Saint-Nicolas, the Pharo, the Catalans and the Pastor.
Only a derogation of the minister P. Sudreau, enthusiastic about the project, allowed to obtain the authorization of the military authorities whose barracks are overhung by the building.
Description:
The triangular island, entirely built, incorporates a relatively complex program comprising a church and a parish school of 6 classes, a conference room of 700 seats, a shopping gallery, a hotel, a panoramic restaurant; Added to this, 220 housing units in two superstructure buildings with parking lots and one can imagine the complexity of the project compared to the current safety regulations.
The architect will not monitor the execution of the work, which will give rise to several appeals to the Sites Commission on the issue of colors implemented that do not respect the initial project. Louis Cottin will make this ensemble the advertising showcase of La Savoisiena. The panoramic restaurant will be the venue for conferences, literary and musical awards and exhibitions of paintings.
With the exception of the restaurant, the entire program is housed in a low tablecloth occupying the entire plot according to two separate plans. This tablecloth acts as a base for housing and organizes very open relations with the public space through a very elaborate and varied facade. The entrances to the concert hall, the commercial gallery and the church coexist. The latter is designated by a corner bell tower and a trunk that sets the canopy of Max Ingrand, the author of the Saint-Valéry-en-Caux stained glass window.
This principle of construction in tablecloth surmounted by towers was experimented in New York on the Lever Building (S.O.M. architects, 1952), or in Europe with the hotel of the Scandinavian Airlines System of Copenhagen (A. Jacobsen, 1960), contemporary of St.
The two superstructure buildings rise to 9 and 19 floors. The lowest, to the south, of current urban gauge, is simply at the alignment of the street of Captain Dessemond. It has shops on the ground floor that alternate with the building halls. The facade is organized on the thickness of the loggias whose lighters and grey washed-out posts punctuate the wall surmounted by the loggias of the tapered gable of the tower ten storeys higher.
The highest volume, at the angle of the first, develops towards the north with a nice inflection towards the west finding the frame of the building of the nearby barracks that it overlooks. The houses are through with loggias on the best oriented facades. The structure is made up of columns leaving the division variations free and thus making possible the superpositions of different functions.
The panoramic restaurant is now replaced by offices: the view makes it an exceptional observation point of the city.
The facades are solidly woven, decomposing slab nose, posts and infill. This elementarist writing will remain one of the characteristic features of Claude Gros’s architecture.
Author:
Claude Gros,
born in 1925, student of the Castel-Hardy workshop, is part of the generation of architects trained in the immediate post-war period.
Author of major housing programs, most often private (the Saint-Georges in 1962), he remained faithful to a rational architecture, where the structures were expressed by rigorous outlines and marked by the need for prefabrication.
Kalliste Park, 1958 (800 units),
La Granière, 1961 (445 dwellings in prefabricated panels),
like Castel Roc, 1973,
or The Mail, 1974.
Finally La Benausse and La Parade where he creates prefabricated architectural panels in three dimensions.
Associated files:
- Map of the 7th district of Marseille
- Documented Monograph Record
© Thierry Durousseau, 2004-2005
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