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.
1.1508 - Cap Janet
La Calade, a right of way near the port in the 15th arrondissement
Literature references: 20th century heritage, domestic architecture
X edition directory no. 1508, p. 44. 2005
Conception & writing T. Durousseau arch. 2007
designation: Cap Janet
46 chemin vicinal Cap Janet, boulevard Paumont, quartier de La Calade 13015
Lambert 3: latitude 3.0143; longitude 43.3388
Access: metro no. 2: Dromel - Bougainville
bus no. 36: Bougainville - La Nerthe , bus no. 35: Joliette - Estaque Riaux , bus no. 70: Canebière - Saint-Exupéry
Owner: LOGIREM, 111 boulevard National, BP 204, 13302
program: Housing group of 278 housing units.
Contracting authority: LOGIREM.
Set of 3 buildings.
dates, authors: Prior agreement: 1961. PC: 1962. Compliance: 1970.
Marcel Roux, H & L Marty, architects.
site: Cap Janet, shoulder of the Calade 30.00 m above the shore. Land of about 30,000 m2, altitude between 29.00 and 50.00 m. Residential area E on the Master Urban Plan of 1949.
mass plane: Articulated on the three identical towers and staggered between 36.00 and 45.00 m, forming a site taken by a monumental space figure. Spreading: R+16.
frame: The towers are not really adapted to local conditions, winds and sunshine, but the view seems to compensate for this handicap. Good general condition despite a tinting contrary to the original design, very simple.
sources: AD: 2071 W 22 (64.978), 165 W 529, 632
RCF Database
Journal Urbanisme n° 117, 1970
Background:
Overlooking the coast, Cape Janet is marked by this strategic character. As early as 1942, the German occupation army made it its headquarters, just above the submarine base, soon targeted by American bombing in 1944. Le Corbusier will even consider the establishment of the Cité Radieuse in the neighbourhood. In fact, with 2,000 people, it is one of the largest slums in Marseille that will settle on these lands in disrepair and beaten by the winds.
The slums are the common lot of the port cities of the Mediterranean, and, past the interventions of Abbé Pierre in 1954, it is Eugene Claudius-Petit who will initiate a settlement of this recurring question. Indeed, in 1951, the question of French Muslim workers from Algeria who come to France at a rate of 140,000 per year emerged. Claudius-Petit, informed of the conditions of their stay in Algeria, andset up in 1956 the Société Nationale de Construction de Foyers pour les travailleurs algerériens (Sonacotra), whose programme is to build 50,000 homes in five years, but the "hostels - hotels" The various forms of communal segregation and, above all, the Algerian conflit and the position of the Ministry of the Interior will clash. In 1958, the Social Action Fund for Algerian Muslim Workers in Metropolitan France was created, financed by family allowances, of which only a portion is paid to families in Algeria and whose priority is "to wrest labour of Algerian origin from the misery of the slums". At the same time, the Logirep, Logirel and Logirem (for Marseille) were created in 1960 to provide housing for families. The cease-fire of 1962 and the OAS reply will lead to the hasty departure of the French from Algeria; a million people transited through Marseille in the most tragic improvisation, the Sonacotra homes are requisitioned for repatriates.
Then is passed the first law for the resorption of slums, the Debré law (1964), it is in this context that the operation of Cap Janet, led by the Logirem is located. When it was delivered six years later, the government of J. Chaban-Delmas through the Vivien Act (1970) extended the issue of slums to that of substandard housing. The slums will leave the media space until a recent period.
Description:
Before being a real estate operation, resorption is a social and educational process that is accompanied by a selection of inhabitants. The building permit file is accompanied by notes specifying the progress of the resorption operation in two stages. A first phase consists in relocating the inhabitants of the slum to temporary cities, "where they are confronted with the problems of modern housing; and a control of their adaptation will make it possible to assess their evolution with a view to a measure of relocation in a HLM city.". This first stage is led by the ATOM (Association of Aid to Overseas Workers) and allows the demolition of the spontaneous habitat by clearing the necessary land for construction.
It should be noted that preliminary projects, not carried out, which seek to avoid the enclavement of the operation then on an isolated site. One of the first projects combines the three towers with a “village” made of grouped houses, dedicated to families who would have difficulty integrating the 16-storey towers.
The building permit also provides for a shopping centre at the centre of the composition, which will not be realized until later and outside the project site. Finally, the social facilities, very important in this project, were planned to be installed in the first two levels of the towers.
In this process, you have to imagine that architecture is not central. Yet we note the efficiency of the site taking that makes the three towers a very visible element, much more visible than the slum. Taking advantage of the podium constituted by the seat of Cape Janet to highlight an elementary figure of space that here becomes monumental. Indeed, if each of the towers does not have a very large slenderness, their repetition and their arrangement frame the interstitial space and its perceptual variations. What the critic C. Jencks describes as a city in the sky in relation to skyscraper, single object.
It should also be noted that the towers have been rehabilitated, the colouring of which weakens the monolithic character by variations of shades that are ill-suited to the simplicity and elementarism of architecture.
Authors:
Henri Marty and Marcel Roux,
We have little data on Henri Marty, but Marcel Roux, architect and urban planner, is known for having accompanied Eugène Claudius-Petit throughout his career.
After studying Fine Arts in Orléans, he joined the Institut d'Urbanisme de l'Université de Paris (IUUP). Mobilized, he was taken prisoner in 1940, and escaped in 1943. He joined Algiers and joined the urban planning department of the Commissariat à l'éducation nationale. Linked to André Sive, in 1943 he participated in the technical congress of France in Combat. Back in France in September 1945, he was on the committee of the Front National des Architectes.
It participates in the renewal of today’s architecture, censored at the beginning of the war. He was then appointed town planner in the Saar by Governor G. Granval with Sive and Pingusson.
In 1947 he replaced Le Corbusier as a town planner at La Rochelle-la Palice, then became a member of Eugene Claudius-Petit’s MRU. He was appointed Ministry Consultant Architect in 1950 and one of the founders of the Espace group.
From 1953 to 1958, he was one of the planners of Firminy Vert with André Sive, then Charles Delfante, Robert Auzelle and Le Corbusier.
Associated files:
- Map of the 15th arrondissement of Marseille
- Printable Monograph Record
© Thierry Durousseau, 2004-2005