Marseille 2nd - La Tourette - Group VIII
- department: Bouches-du-Rhône
- municipality: Marseille
- naming: La Tourette - Group VIII
- address : square Protis
- authors: André LECOMTE (chief architect), René EGGER, Fernand POUILLON (architects)
- date: 1948-1952
- protection: unprotected building
- label patrimoine XXe: Commission régionale du patrimoine et des sites du 28 November 2000
The Tourette complex is part of the reconstruction of the Old Port district. In a context of material shortage and inflationary Fernand Pouillon manages to make an operation with quality and reduced cost. The program is 260 homes with, as everywhere else on the Old Port, shops and garages planned on the ground floor. This operation will be appreciated by the victims and the Ministry of Reconstruction and Urban Planning, which will apply to the architect of other projects (buildings of the port quay in Marseille, city of Les Sablettes in La Seyne, old port of Bastia) and the title of"architect-consultant of the M.R.U." for the departments of Vaucluse, Basses-Alpes and Hautes-Alpes. The operation is delivered almost at the same time as the Le Corbusier Housing Unit, with a model apartment equipped with furniture from Jean Prouvé’s workshops.
Fernand Pouillon (1912-1986) studied at the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Marseille and Paris. The period of the war allowed him to meet Eugène Beaudouin in Marseille, and that of the reconstruction Auguste Perret. From the first, he retains an art of urban composition and public spaces, and from the second the importance of the mastery of structure and construction as well as a taste for the marriage of modernity and classicism, the actualization of tradition. His writing and his approach are affirmed in his first major post-war projects in Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. His work, very abundant, continued in Algeria, Iran and Île-de-France.
Rejected by the censors of the Modern Movement, despised, criticized and imprisoned for his critical approach to the construction (and speculation) world in the 1960s, the quality of his work and the validity of his thought are now recognized.
René Egger was associated with Fernand Pouillon between 1944 and 1953. His later work is linked to orders from the Ministries of Education and Health.
The whole of La Tourette presents itself as a modern island that crowns the reconstructed site of the Old Port district. Contrary to the monumental order of the dock of the Port, which will come later, the stake was here to succeed a piece of banal fabric, placed however in a strategic position: screen against the mistral and definition of the new "skyline" from the old town between the forts and the Accoules bell tower.
The architects do it superbly while organizing the mass plan around a course that unfortunately will not be planted. Timeless in spirit, simultaneously modern and traditional, this architectural ensemble surprises with the obvious simplicity and sensitivity of its new style. To the credit of modernity: the typologies of bars and towers; the systematic use of frames to streamline construction; the adoption of the loggia device...
To the credit of the reinvented tradition: the stone (veneer on the first slice and solid blocks on the second) used here as an industrial component; the decorative elements that reinterpret the Mediterranean tradition (ceramic claustras, wooden moucharabiehs, sculptures by Jean Amado of archaic modern spirit, stone beads that mark the levels...).
- Editor: Jean-Lucien Bonillo, ensa Marseille, 2002
- Source: 20 monuments of the 20th century, modern heritage exhibition in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, eaml, 2002
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