20.1213 - Les Lierres
La Fourragère, 12th arrondissement
Literature references: 20th century heritage, domestic architecture
X edition directory number: 1213, p 29. 2005
Label Patrimoine du XXe siècle, 2006
Conception & writing T. Durousseau arch. 2007
designation: HLM Les Lierres
42 avenue du 24 avril 1915, quartier La Fourragère 13012
Lambert 3: latitude 3.09174; longitude 433069
Access: bus no. 7 Canebière - Les Trois Lucs
Owner: OPAC South, 80 Albe Street, 13004, 04 91 12 71 00
program: 312 social rental housing, low-income financing, collective parking, no public facilities.
Contracting authority: Office Public départemental d'Habitations à Loyer Modéré des Bouches-du-Rhône.
Set of 5 buildings bars, squares B to J and tower A. Proximity to neighborhood equipment.
dates, authors: Studies from 1958. Completion of works 1967. Rehabilitation 1982, 86.
P. Averous, M. Scialom, architects, R. Perrachon, collaborator.
Polychrome, F. Martinelli, painter.
Enterprises, Yards and concrete of the Mediterranean, EGCB.
site: Chemin de Saint-Julien, between the canal and the Saint-Barnabé basin. Altitude between 118.00 and 133.00 m. Housing in discontinuous order, Sector G of the Master Town Planning Plan of 1949.
mass plane: Plan centered on the tower of R+16 surrounded by groups of buildings of R+4 and 5 in wing of mill, collective parking, outdoor spaces arranged.
frame: Concrete column-slab structure, visible on the facade. Very plastic tower, trace of elements of light facade. Good general condition. Colouring disappeared.
sources: AD: 2071 W 19 (52.307), 165 W 332, 7 FTE 264-268, 77 J 499-502, 590-599
Prado Magazine no. 1, 1965 and 3, 1967
Architecture Guide, Marseille, 1945-1993 : M. H. Biget, J. Sbriglio, Parentheses, 1993
Background:
The plot is located on the way to Saint-Julien, opposite the water treatment plant of Saint-Barnabé and close to the subdivision of the Rosière and the church of the Augustinians.
Former bastide of Dumont, property of the General Foncière where was then planned a subdivision in a part of the park with pools, tennis courts and wooded alleys.
The terrain leaning towards the south between the hills of altitudes 118 and 133 is crossed at a low point by the derivation of the Trois Lucs of the Marseille Canal.
The first studies date back to 1958 and show buildings whose half-level duplex distributions evoke the Radiant City.
Description:
The first phase of work was carried out by the Société des Chantiers et Bétons de la Méditerranée from 1959. Buildings C, D, and E have evolved into an open forward-body west composition.
The buildings are small, less than 10 m, with a pole structure of 0.30 x 0.30 m with a centre distance of 3.10 m. They are divided into four rows: two inside and two outside. On the facade, the grid posts and floors (refends, frames) define a partitioning of the facade panels that preserve the windows and loggias.
The distribution of the four-storey buildings is done by an open right flight staircase with two dwellings per floor, type 3 or 4 rooms.
Each unit has a living room, with loggia on one side and with storage limited to 2.10 m high, surmounted by a glass transom on the other. The separative partition is achieved by doubling the dividing plaster partitions.
The initial colouring of these linear buildings is determined by the grey of the structure, the light ochre panels, and the dark blue louvers.
The second tranche of 1961 modified the mass plan centered on the tower. The exterior design seems to have been carefully defined (soil, plantation, urban furniture). The EGCB company completed this new tranche in 1966.
Around the tower, are distributed in a mill wing the squares of the buildings whose north-south branches are dislocated in elementary blocks to avoid the effect of alignment of the bars. These squares draw four quadrants around the high building, like so many secondary spaces.
The same structure as the first slice, we find on the ground floor common laundry rooms and premises for social assistance. A shopping centre project will be devised later, without success. It is the tower that holds all the attention. Placed in the centre of the composition, it creates a form of signal that stands out from the usual repetition principle for this type of building.
Generally, the towers are designed according to the principle described by L. Sullivan in 1896 in "Business buildings considered from an artistic point of view": beyond the first floor, one must find an indefinite number of floors of which each room is similar to the others, as well as each floor, like the cells of a honeycomb.
If, in the floors, the distribution of the apartments is constant, determined by a very ordered frame, the variations in the position of the dryers on the balconies, that of loggias and balconies suffices to establish a combination of changing figures forming a motif developed on six floors.
The tower presents, on one side, the complex image of this combinatorial maintaining the domestic scale by the elements that compose it (lightening, windows, clear ways). On the other side, the overall scale is, conversely, amplified by the condensation of the drillings, and the facade seems to reiterate a colossal graphic order like a totem. We are in the presence of a low-rise tower, only 16 floors. This writing takes the building out of the alternatives of dominant horizontal or vertical to restore a network of openwork of the concrete wall interfering with the reading of the proportions of the solid. The thin, openwork wall combines the facade with a braided organization, an armoured texture giving a non-constructive appearance of the wall, that of an envelope.
One cannot help but bring the Lierres tower closer to the dwellings of Ivry-sur-Seine designed by the Atelier de Montrouge (J. Renaudie, P. Riboulet, G. Thurnauer, J.L. Veret) without there being a filiation since the two realizations are contemporary. However, EDF buildings play on a purely volumetric dislocation expression and are limited to only 5 or 6 floors. In addition, it will be noted that the Lierres project has used elements of light facades, glass panels, sandwich panels whose future will be compromised by energy crises, and also by the rehabilitation that will follow.
One last point remains to be noted here, that of the color setting of the set. The artist Françoise Martinelli applies with discernment the principles of modern polychromy: colors on the flat walls of linear buildings (grey, blue, white) and monochrome on the tower (beige) are a real sculptural object.
Authors:
Pierre Averous, Maurice Scialom
Pierre Averous, born in 1927 in Marseille, and Maurice Scialom, one year younger, graduated in 1953. He worked with A. Devin for Campagne Larousse in 1958.
From 1957, the association of P. Averous and M. Scialom will give a number of achievements such as:
Saint-Barthélémy, Picon-Busserine, 1962, with Bondon and Madeline,
Les Cèdres, 1965,
Val Pin and L'Américaine, 1968,
Massalia Jaurès, 1969,
Les Néreides, 1971.
Subsequently P. Averous will be a founding member of Atelier Delta with Y. Bonnel, L. Dallest and R. Perrachon.
Associated files:
- Map of the 12th arrondissement of Marseille
- Documented Monograph Record
© Thierry Durousseau, 2004-2005
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