The radiant house of Rezé
The radiant house located in Rezé, known as the Radiant City of Le Corbusier, was built in 1953. On the high terrace of the building, the construction of the kindergarten begins in 1954.
The nursery school building was built independently of the housing unit. Its ensemble is rectangular in shape with a flat roof. A system of posts -beams allows the walls of facades not to be carriers. Many openings were made with concrete frames. and create a plastic composition, in collaboration with Iannis Xénakis. This intentionally «random» composition is reinforced by an alternation of the dimensions of the frames and windows (white, colors, horizontal reinforced glass, hexagonal reinforced «chicken wire» type and corrugated glass). These arrangements are the translation and the evolution of the 5 bridges of the architecture: plan free, roof terrace, facade free, windows in length and stilts.
The radiant house is classified as a historical monument in 2001
The restoration work
Before being classified as a historic monument, the nursery school underwent several modifications, following the rehabilitation of the entire unit and its roof terrace in the 1980s and 1990s. Maintenance work was carried out, as well as spot repairs to the waterproofing of the roof terrace or the painting of the facades as well as the installation of a false ceiling inside. Unfortunate alterations were also made of the concrete.
The 2022 restoration consisted in erasing the errors of these works and finding the original arrangements, materials and colors, as desired and realized by Le Corbusier, in the 1950s.
With this in mind, Pierluigi Pericolo, a heritage architect, and his team have undertaken excellent research into the archives of the Le Corbusier Foundation in Paris. The plans as well as the precise descriptions made it possible to find all the architectural and plastic components of Le Corbusier’s work.
This is how concretes were analyzed in the laboratory to find their composition and texture for spot repairs. The glycerol paint affixed to the concrete acrotere has been completely cleared and the original concrete has been banked (with wooden boards) to find the texture of the original concrete.
The paintings on the facades and carpentry were stratigraphized for the general restoration of the building.
All the glass openings were inventoried. The windows were replaced according to their colour or design.
The ceilings of the interiors have recovered the original texture, flocking way
The oak carpentry was either restored or changed when their condition did not allow their restoration.
The amount of the work amounted to €600,000 excluding tax and a subsidy was granted by the State, Ministry of Culture of 40%, or €240,000 excluding tax.
Companies involved in the school’s rebirth:
- LEFEVRE Sainte-Luce-sur-Loire for concrete
- the ARTHEMA company in Nantes for paints, with workshops Eric Boucher Angers subcontracting for glazing.
- MAG, NANTES (general joinery) for joinery
- AXIMA, BOUGUENAIS, to seal the terrace
Le Corbusier project
Faced with urban chaos resulting from the 19th century industrial revolution, the architects of the Le Corbusier generation are seeking solutions to the housing crisis that is forcing people to pile up in centres suffocated by car traffic or to exile themselves in sinister suburbs in the immediate vicinity of industries.
Le Corbusier advocates three-dimensional urban planning. Modern building techniques, the future of which is prefabrication, with steel, concrete or even the lift now allow the construction in height. It is for the architect the means to meet a double requirement: both quantitative in maintaining a high density of inhabitants in the very heart of the cities; and above all qualitative in returning to men the essential joys: sun, space, greenery.
These so-called high-rise housing units are designed to house some 1600 inhabitants, a threshold that justifies the organization of common services (shops, schools, sports equipment, etc....The five units built in Marseille (1952), Rezé 1955), Berlin (1958), Briey ( 1961) and Firminy (1966) are prototypes in very different urban contexts.
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