Manosque - Lotissement Les Mûriers
- department: Alpes-de-Haute-Provence
- common: Manosque
- name: Mulberry Subdivision
- author: Georges Candilis (1913-1995) (architect)
- date: 1962-1963
- protection: unprotected building
- 20th Heritage Label: Regional Heritage and Sites Commission (CRPS) of 28 November 2000
Manosque experienced in the 1960s an economic expansion, at the origin of a strong demographic increase, generated by three concomitant phenomena: the hydroelectric developments of the Durance Canal, the installation of the Cadarache Atomic Energy Commission (C.E.A.) 25 kilometers from Manosque and the arrival of returnees from North Africa. This sudden influx of people is forcing urban planners to review the city’s development plan for the coming years. The new plan provides for an extension of the city to the south to the railway. It is in this perimeter, called to become the future residential, administrative and commercial area, equipped with all the modern infrastructures, that is located on a quadrangular ground, located between the stadium and the station, the subdivision Les Mûriers.
The subdivision is organized on a division into terraced plots, arranged in narrow strips and divided into three separate sets forming an open U to the south. In the center is a collective garden arranged in artificial mound, covered with a plant composition that reproduces the effects of a natural landscape and preserves privacy by avoiding direct vis-à-vis. The houses, identical, are joined two by two and form a square module that repeats itself, arranged in sawtooth in each set. The general frame is made of reinforced concrete, the curtain walls of hollow cement agglomerates, the two-sided roof covered with hollow tiles. The modern rhythmic expression of the facades is obtained through a clever calculation of composition that individualizes by the relief and the color each element of the construction and contributes to the cubist character of the whole. The geometric frame, composed of horizontal and vertical lines formed by the thickness of the structural elements of the frame, is underlined with a white coating. The curtain walls, positioned recessed or projecting, give relief to the surface and are treated in large colored flat areas. The housing, crossing, includes a basement floor with garage and cellar, a raised ground floor and a floor, all divided into half levels. The floor opens onto a terrace of arranged pleasure, side butte, on a part of the attic. The interior layout favours the separation of functions and the fluidity of spaces. The light penetrates largely through the wall of the living room fully opened by a bay window. The equipment (equipped kitchen, dining area with hatch and bench, libraries, cupboards) take the idea of the integrated furniture of Le Corbusier and Charlotte Perriand.
Georges Candilis, a pupil of Le Corbusier with whom he directs the work of the Housing Unit of Marseille, is renowned for the major projects of architecture and urbanism, centered on collective housing, which he leads in North Africa (he leads the Atbat-Africa) and in France (Z.U.P. of Toulouse Le Mirail) with its internationally renowned agency Candilis-Josic-Woods. In 1953, he developed a theory on the organization of the interior volume based on the duplex housing units of Le Corbusier. While maintaining the main qualities of the corbusian duplex (double orientation, deep housing, minimum facade, separation of functions), it removes the double height of the living room that it replaces with the creation of a half-floor rather than a floor, which induces a saving in height and volume and a better habitability thanks to the new fluidity given to the circulations. This theory is clearly applied to Manosque’s program.
The C.E.A. of Cadarache, installed since 1959 in Saint-Paul-les-Durance, quickly became an important regional development center. In 1961, the company planned to build 34 houses with private gardens and five collective buildings in Manosque for the housing of its employees. This initial project is similar to that of Aix-en-Provence called Le Petit Nice realized the same year by Georges Candilis also for the C.E.A. In the final program of Manosque, only the subdivision was realized. The construction company is the Société des Grands Travaux Alpins (S.G.T.A.). The financial package involves the creation of a Real Estate Civil Society and obtaining loans for construction. The whole realized between 1962 and 1963 includes a concerted subdivision of 30 houses where the division into regular plots is subject to constraints, architectural and plan-mass.
The subdivision has undergone several modifications, including the addition of two houses breaking with the architectural party and the constructive framework; disappearance of the original polychrome facades. This set made with great attention to detail, retains a human scale rare enough in this type of real estate program that it deserves to be emphasized and especially preserved. The subdivision of the Mulberry trees appears as a work of foreground both by the quality of its architect and by the ambition and the realization of the project. The subdivision is part of the perimeter of the Z.P.P.A.U.P. of Manosque and benefits from the Heritage label of the twentieth century.
Printable version of the leaflet: mulberry subdivision
- Editor: Claudine Bron, art historian
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