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.
1.1131 - The Solitude
the 11th arrondissement, east of Marseille, along the Huveaune
Literature references: 20th century heritage, domestic architecture
X edition directory number: 1131, p 28. 2005
Conception & writing T. Durousseau arch. 2007
designation: Parc de La Solitude
125 boulevard de la Millière, traverse de la Solitude, quartier de Millière 13011
Lambert 3: lat.3.16602; long. 43.2825
Access: metro 1 & 2
bus no. 15: Sainte-Marguerite Dromel - Les Escourtines, bus no. 26: Castellane - Les Escourtines
Owner: Syndicat des copropriétaire du Parc de la Solitude
program: Housing group of 78 units.
Client: Société Civile Immobilière La Solitude.
Leon Ballot, builder.
Set of 4 buildings.
dates, authors: Building Permits: 1962. Delivery: 1965
Georges Reynaud and Albert Turcat, architects.
Company S. A. Léon Ballot.
LOGECO financing.
site: On the eastern edge of the city, south of Huveaune and on the border of the commune of La Penne-sur-Huveaune. Land sloping towards the north, altitudes between 75.00 and 90.00 m. Residential area E on the Master Urban Plan of 1949.
mass plane: Repetition in series of identical buildings, located along an alley of bastide. The plan keeps the alley and its trees clean and clears a wide strip of open ground. The inscription in the slope is done in a regular way.
frame: Small buildings with courtyard, distribution by passageways. All concrete construction, very modular facade elements. Good general condition.
sources: AD: 2071 W 17 (49.301), 165 W 585
Marseilles and its suburbs, Alfred Saurel, Marseilles, 1878
Background:
Solitude with La Buzine, La Reynarde and La Bastide Montgrand is one of the castles around Saint-Menet that Alfred Saurel described as beautiful houses at the end of the 19th century.
The hamlet of La Millière was then divided between mills along the Huveaune and beautiful properties on the ubac of the Lantin and Carpiagne mountains. It is located east of La Barasse, which will remain for a long time the limit of the electrification of the Huveaune valley, and therefore of industrial and urban development. The post-war urban planning plans envisage only a growth of the village nuclei. The residential character alone will persist. The return of the returnees from Algeria will accelerate urbanization after 1962.
It is in the park of the bastide Solitude that the ensemble will be built.
Description:
The type of buildings and their composition within the mass plan are particularly adapted to the bastion system of La Solitude, whose tree-lined driveway (tèse) climbed in the axis of the ground, bordered by successive terraces. At the top of the alley was to the east the old bastide, and to the west the mansion of the late nineteenth century.
It is on the latter that the plane of mass will settle with small buildings of equal right of way and of similar height that are regularly distributed in the slope.
The coherence of the masses, the regularity of their spacing, establishes a perfect continuity between the mansion located at the top of the ground and the bottom occupied by the small buildings. Only the western part of the land is occupied by buildings, the alley and terraces to the east remain intact, giving a coherent and airy aspect to the mass plan.
If the traces of the original plane are today less visible, the device remains understandable.
The architecture of the buildings differs, of course, from the slate turrets of the mansion.
Externally, we find ourselves facing adjusted facades, framed by concrete posts and whose windows fill the majority of the intervals.
Only drawer-balconies, formed of a simple square of concrete, interrupt the effect of grid. The ground floor is partly occupied by a stone base and for the majority empty, stilts supporting the floors. The solid part that contains the cellars is more or less embedded in the general slope of the ground. The open part leads to the distribution of the apartments which is done through a patio. Patio where there is an open air staircase serving the three levels of passageways on which the apartments open. The bays of the service rooms, whose lightening is clearly raised, also overlook this central vacuum.
The passageway, distributes six dwellings in floors from two to four rooms. The large apartments are on the corners, benefiting from two exhibitions, the two rooms are in a single exhibition. In fact, the structure of the building with a tramed and bearing facade as well as the walls overlooking the patio make a model of ring exostructure allowing a fairly free distribution of the apartments. The separations between dwellings are made of the addition of asymmetrical light partitions on either side of the division in order to avoid drum effects from one apartment to another.
The principle of a central void, patio or inner courtyard, is not common in Marseilles where the city building dominates and where distributions by passageway are less and less used because they convey a working image that does not conform to the economic progress of the moment.
If we can think of the Spanish influence of such an organization, the facade in controlled exostructure is of French expression, related in many ways to the achievements of André Devin. The only regret is that this typology has not developed further in the city.
Authors:
Albert Turcat,
born around 1914, signed with Georges Reinaud several groups from Marseille.
1957-60 Longchamp Apartment Building,
1959-60, Central Castellane apartment building,
1963, Marignane apartment building,
1964, apartment building, rue Daudet 13013,
1964, housing group Val Riant, Aubagne, model identical to that of La Solitude.
Albert Turcat will also be associated with Pierre Jaume and Marius David.
Georges Reinaud
will be mainly known as Georges Carta’s partner in Marseille.
Associated files:
- Map of the 11th district of Marseille
- Documented Monograph Record
© Thierry Durousseau, 2004-2005