If the investigations on architecture of the second twentieth century are now about ten years old, this heritage remains largely less recognized by the edility and the public, hence the interest of the censuses and monographs proposed here. Logically, after the census phase, which delimited the corpus of ensembles and residencies in Marseilles in its extension, the aim was to reduce their contours in order to develop a greater understanding, formalized by the monograph sheets. By definition, they reflect only one object of the corpus, but all the monographs thus constitute a collection covering a series of similar objects allowing the construction of typologies, classifications and comparisons.
1.0937 - La Rouvière or Super-Marseille - 0938 - Super-Rouvière
La Panouse, a steep site east of Marseille, 9th arrondissement
Literature references: 20th century heritage, domestic architecture
X edition directory no. 0937, 0938, p. 20, 2005
Conception & writing T. Durousseau arch. 2007
designation: Residence La Rouvière or Super-Marseille - Residence Super-Rouvière
83 à 211 boulevard du Redon, quartier de La Panouse 13009
Lambert 3: latitude 3.08774; longitude 43.2527
Access: metro 2: Bougainville - Sainte-Marguerite Dromel
bus no. 24: metro Sainte-Marguerite - Luminy, bus no. 48: metro Sainte-Marguerite - Clairval, Redon
Owner: Co-ownership, Syndic Cogefim-Fouques 04 91 17 20 50
program: 2,200 units, collective parking, school group, shopping mall, gardens and landscaping.
Contracting authority: Cravero Frères
1,000 F bonus financing and Logéco, bank loan.
Set of 7 buildings: tower, bars and folded bars.
dates, authors: Prior Agreement: 1960. Building Permits: 1961, 62, 63 and 1964.
Implementation in four successive phases. Completion of work: 1971.
Raoul Guyot, architect. Design office, SEREAT.
Company, The Great Works of the East.
site: East of the Marseille canal, at the foot of the Rouvière (219m), north of the old quarries of the Vallon Redon. Altitude between 80.00 and 160.00 m, steep slope (50%) towards the northwest. Land of 13 ha urbanized on 29. House in discontinuous order, Field area of the Master Town Planning Plan of 1949.
mass plane: Plan centered on the tower (R+30) and the shopping center, with a climb to the Super-Rouvière, 80 m above, by staging 4 buildings from R+15 to R+21. Large landscaped spaces.buildingStructure in refends, prefabricated non bearing facades on site. Travertine coating for the west facades. Good general condition.
sources: AD: 2071 W 22 (65.069), 23 (67.652), 165 W 908-911, 536
Provence, 27 January 2004
Marseille Hebdo, 2004
Background:
It is on the site of a real castle that La Rouvière will be built during the sixties, we imagine a city of 4,000 dwellings under the name of Super-Marseille. For Rouvière alone, the land is very important, no less than 29 hectares, and in a natural zone, we will decommission to make a disjointed operation. The general density on the steep hill site will be condensed into the foothills of the relief on 13 ha, doubling the average density but leaving a part of the hill intact. The importance of the project will require crossing all the possible commissions: prior authorization, building permit and even Higher Commission of Architecture after obtaining the building permit. Initially, André Devin was approached by the Cravero brothers. Following a disagreement, he was replaced by Raoul Guyot. However Xavier Arsène-Henry was to have a very strong influence on the mass plan and attended the construction meetings. Of course the architect advising the ministry will be enthusiastic about the project. The inspector of Urban Planning Georges Meyer Heine arguing that the 80 m of altitude is not so easily accessible and that the site will be very marked by such a project. The promoters undertake to the Superior Commission of Architecture to install a lift and to dress the travertine facades. Reports indicate that X. Arsène-Henry reported that the transaction had been carefully monitored. He says he continues personally, beyond his mission as a consulting architect, to follow the evolution of the operation that promises to be a great success!
The story will not stop there, since once the first tranches are committed, a parcel detachment will allow the construction of the Super-Rouvière, building of more than 400 dwellings. The Neighborhood Interest Committees were moved by this, and the future Secretary of State Raoul Rudeau, stationed in Marseille, will push the idea of a property tax that takes into account the built value of the properties. Certain success, the apartments will be sold on plan in Algiers, to finish with the legal liquidation of the Company Cravero which will make it difficult to complete the work. Today La Rouvière is the largest condominium in Europe, and artists such as painter Adrian Dura and Japanese photographer Naoya Hatakeyama have taken it as a motif.
Description:
If the notion of mass plane has a meaning it is here, where the way of composing the built volumes is translated into a real site taking. Who did not see, on the return of Cassis, the south gable of the Super Rouvière surpassing the ridge line of the Vaufrège hills! In reality, the plan, its density, is largely controlled by the roads that climb the steep slopes of the hill and serve one by one the seven buildings. The succession of laces ends with a loop and builds a path, a vision in motion of the whole.
Past the gate under control, we leave a bar of 7 to 10 floors with constant acrotère, and a small tower of 11 floors. On the left hand, the remains of the garden with the basin focused on the castle, whose link was broken by an incongruous residential complex (the Rouvière was further densified!).
The shopping centre is then bypassed with its post office, three banks, supermarket and thirty shops, surmounted by the large tower of more than 100 m, pivot of the composition and placed at the low point of the residence. Facing the shopping centre and beyond the parking mats, a hemicycle garden with a forest plan is covered by a diagonal path that indicates the pedestrian access to the buildings 30 m above. The track skirts these buildings from the north, a straight bar perpendicular to the slope and two bent bars. The bar, to the north of the device, is opposite 22 rows of garages, it takes the principle of continuity of the acrotère, maintaining a constant sky line, amplifying the scale of the building in relation to the site.
The folded bars of about twenty floors create a wide opening on the bottom of the residence, in a movement of folds and counter-folds a little like a wave movement. The road is between the buildings and the slope, the impression of collection is reinforced with the confrontation with the Super-Rouvière 50 m higher still. It is a bit like cliffs that also show the divorce between the front and rear facades: the first, facing the sea, widely glazed, covered with travertine, all in the horizontal balconies, and the dry back facades in simple plaster and pierced by hundreds of identical windows. The Super-Rouvière dominates the complex in a vertiginous way, sitting on a pedestal of four floors of built parking, which it is necessary to cross if you come on foot. Here again we recognize the devices that X. Arsene-Henry used at Nîmes Valdegour.
Against all expectations the building system is without great invention: frames of less than 4.00 m, floors and facades in concrete ribbing and hollow ceramic bodies, prefabrication on site for the latter, very repetitive distribution of three dwellings per floor, with a mono-oriented 2P. The buildings have a relatively low thickness of 11.30 m for twenty floors, giving them a fragile and sharp appearance that will be worth to be called screens.
With 8,000 inhabitants, La Rouvière is a successful neighbourhood unit despite a violent architecture related to a powerful site. The monumental scales of both give the strange impression of a unique mineral texture between rock and construction, some evenings at dusk, the facades seem to ignite from the last rays of the sun, at night it is a city in the sky: what remains of the Super-Marseillle is part of the great landscape of the city.
Author:
Raoul Guyot,
born in 1904 in Thunder, Yonne, graduated in 1930, first enrollment in the order in 1941. He is not known for many other achievements other than La Rouvière, in Marseille, Valmante and Valmante-Michelet in which his son Bernard Guyot will participate.
We will also note in Marseille, in 1957, a housing building in La Blancarde, a complex in Saint-Tronc in 1959 and several buildings on Boulevard Perier in 1960. At the same time that he created La Rouvière and Super-Rouvière, he built Valmante (1,382 dwellings in Cabot) and Valmante-Michelet (607 dwellings in Mazargues). All of its 4,000 housing units correspond to Super-Marseille.
Associated files:
- Map of the 9th district of Marseille
- Documented Monograph Record
© Thierry Durousseau, 2004-2005