Marseille 12th - Bois Lemaître
- department: Bouches-du-Rhône
- municipality: Marseille
- naming: Bois Lemaître
- address : rue Emile Baudot, 1 avenue Jean Compadieu
- author: Louis OLMETA (architect)
- date: 1954
- protection: unprotected building
- label patrimoine XXe: Commission régionale du patrimoine et des sites (CRPS) du 16 November 2006
Located on the Montolivet plateau, in a beautiful pine forest partially preserved, the LOGECO (economic housing) program, initiated in 1952, was assigned to a cooperative of civil servants.
The overall plan of Louis Olmeta will preserve the pine forest which gives all its character to the rather monumental device. Simultaneously with its construction, the complex will be equipped with a school group, a shopping center, and even a small parish center, remained provisional.
Totaling more than 800 units for the first tranche alone, the program is comparable to those of the Rental Industrial Sector. The ensemble implements the bearing stone process, developed on the Old Port reconstruction site by carrier Paul Marcerou for architect Fernand Pouillon.
The composition is the result of a path of crane required by the use of thick stone for bars of 4 floors and more than 300m. The set borders the pine forest tongue for 500m. Centered on a 15-storey tower, its architectural form echoes the German neoclassicism of the late 1930s. To the north is housed the school group, and there is an inflected bar at the conclusion of the mass plan on the edges of the limestone table above the Jarret valley.
The stone dominates the landscape, repeating the same elements: mullions, bays, loggias, entrances and foundations of Cyclopean equipment. Only a few galleries carried by conical concrete columns refer to an intermediate scale with the site and the monumental composition.
The unit remained in good condition thanks to its construction system.
- Editor: Thierry Durousseau, architect, 2006
Read also in Heritage of the 20th century, the study Marseille, ensembles and residences from 1955/1975