Guillaume Gillet - a centenary in concrete

French architect Guillaume Gillet would have been 100 this year, and to celebrate this anniversary an exhibition has been organised in Royan, home of his one true masterpiece, the Notre Dame church. A recent visit to the town gave me the opportunity to learn more about the designer of the Palais de Congrès in Paris (a construction I find both dreadful and fascinating), and discover how a key part of Paris almost looked very different today.

In the introduction to the exhibition, the word 'controversial' is used to describe the creations of Guillaume Gillet. Although he himself declared in 1965 that "nous vivons un âge d'or de l'architecture", public opinion today generally does not share this viewpoint. Nevertheless, his whole career was spent working in a post-war period known as 'les trentes glorieuses' in France, when large areas of the country needed to be quickly rebuilt and funds were abundant. It was an age when anything seemed possible, and architects were given vastly more freedom to imagine constructions than they have today.   

Indeed, freedom seems to be something of a leitmotif throughout Gillet's career. After studying under Auguste Perret (see previous post), Gillet found himself a prisoner of war before his career had even begun. He spent nearly five years as a prisoner in Germany, but he was far from inactive. After befriending several other prisoners with a similar background to his own (and who he would later work with throughout his career), he designed and decorated a small chapel within the prison camp.

Perhaps eternally marked by this experience, Gillet spent most of his career designing both churches and prisons. It was one of his first constructions though that would prove to be his chef d'oeuvre, the Notre Dame de Royan church. Gillet himself became so associated with the building that he requested his ashes to be placed here after his death - a request that was finally accepted in 1996, 9 years after his death.

During the Second World War, the town - an important port on the Atlantic coast - was occupied by the German army, and by the end of the conflict over 85% of the town's buildings had been destroyed. Rather than just disappear from the map, the town authorities decided to give the town a completely new identity, centred around a prominent new structure, the Notre Dame church. 

Built entirely in concrete, it is a spectacular construction, albeit one already in need of renovation. Although a material derided by many, the church truly shows the capacities of concrete to produce the monumental. V-shaped columns shoot skywards around the structure, supporting a roof which is only 8cm thick. Spiral staircases and sweeping balconies complete a building which impresses through it's somewhat austere simplicity.  

The high salt content in the sea sand used to make the concrete is slowly corroding the metal reinforcements. Coupled with the aggressive coastal conditions, the church is suffering, particularly on rainy days. On the day I visited, large dustbins had been placed all around the church to catch the numerous leaks.

As with many architects, the career of Guillaume Gillet was marked not so much by what he built but also by the projects that never made it off the drawing board. Two of the most significant of these were planned for riverside spots in Paris. The first was a proposition for a permanent Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace alongside the Seine at the very edge of the city. Based very much on his Pavillon de la France which was built for the 1958 Universal Exhibition in Brussels, it would have made an impressive addition to the Paris skyline in a position where finally nothing has ever been built.

Sketches for a proposed Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace, © Fonds Guillaume Gillet

Gillet's other principal project was one that came much closer to being built, and one which would have been far more controversial. For over 15 years, Gillet - with associate René Coulon - worked on propositions for buildings to replace the underused Gare d'Orsay on the city's left-bank (later of course to become the world-renowned Musée d'Orsay). Having become little more than an unneccesary additional stop for suburban trains, the station was long scheduled for demolition, and the two architects produced a series of propositions.

An initial rather banal plan for a headquarters building for the Air France company was not developed, but a design for a luxury hotel and conference centre did later win a competition (ahead of an even more radical project from Le Corbusier among others). However both changing tastes and a financial crisis put paid to the project before work could begin. The station was eventually given protected status, and a decision was made to preserve it and transform it into a museum. 

A proposed HQ building for Air France dating from 1957 (top) and the much more daring (and accepted) proposition for an international hotel from 1961. © Fonds Guillaume Gillet  

Gillet's proposed building is not a bad one (and certainly more interesting than the hotel and conference centre he did later build at Porte Maillot), but it would have radically changed the left-bank skyline. However, the Eiffel tower had of course also done something similar a century earlier.

It will remain though an architecture of the invisible, a ghost structure that will now haunt me when I pass by the Musée d'Orsay. To remember Gillet though, it is far better to return to Notre Dame de Royan, as he himself was to do.

Guillaume Gillet, architecte des trentes glorieuses
Until 21st June 2012
Musée de Royan
31 avenue de Paris
Royan

When concrete was a craft

A small workshop in the 11th arrondissement proudly displays the trade of the craftsmen originally based here. Through an elegant, swirling font and a carved mural above the entrance, these masons of reinforced concrete (béton armé) showed that they were a new breed of worker whose skills were comparable to the best carpenters or stone masons. In the modern world at the beginning of the 20th century, they were the ones that represented the future.

Concrete today has such bad press that it is difficult to imagine a time when artisans would boast about their prowess with the material. Swamped in concrete jungle cities where trees of towers are blamed for all of societies ills, few would dare boast today of such a service.

As the architect Mies Van der Rohe noted however, “we must remember that everything depends on how we use a material, not on the material itself”. At the beginning of the 20th century, inspired by precursors such as Anatole de Baudot, the architect of the revolutionary Saint Jean de Montmartre church, everybody wanted to work with concrete. The forms and structures of buildings could now be adapted, opening up a future that would be limited only by the size of our imagination.

In the 1920s, concrete became synonymous with modernity and luxury, and when Mallet-Stevens or Le Corbusier were chosen by the elite to build their houses, this was the material the clients requested. The owners of the establishment photographed here would have been involved in such projects, and would have been naturally keen to highlight their competence to work on such prestigious constructions.

So where did it all go wrong? Concrete is still used massively around the world, with more than one cubic metre produced each year for every person on Earth, but when did it lose its prestige? Paris contains many fantastic examples of concrete constructions, notably the structures designed by Auguste Perret in the 1930s (such as the Palais d’Iena or the Mobilier National), but the real damage to its reputation was done in the second half of the century.

Whereas concrete buildings were once divided into two schools, described by architecture historian Bernard Marrey as the ‘lyrisme de la courbe’ (lyricism of the curve) and ‘la poésie de l'angle droit’ (poetry of the right angle), today they are grouped together with a general sentiment of penny-pinching and poverty of thought. The ubiquity of the material and the lack of reflection on its suitability and sustainability has lead to concrete cancer and crumbling public infrastructure.

Would those who created this enterprise have imagined this future? This was to be a noble material, one that they had mastered and for which they had helped build a solid reputation. It is a shame that I cannot knock on their door and ask them to put us on the right path once more.

A Flight Back in Time

For professional reasons I found myself last week at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget in the northern suburbs of Paris, and although my brief was to concentrate on state of the art technology, I did manage to find some time to investigate the distinctive, historic architecture of the airport. It was my first visit to the site, but I can safely say that it is it is well worth the short trip from the capital for anybody who is interested in designs of the 1920s and 30s.

For over fifty years, Le Bourget was the principal airport of Paris. It was a place that saw the birth of aviation and the stationing of airborne troops during the 1914-18 war. The first passenger flights began around 1919, linking Paris to London, Brussels and Amsterdam, with around 6000 taking such flights in 1920. It was also the site of aviation advances and exploits, and was the place that Charles Lindbergh landed his ‘Spirit of Saint Louis’ in 1927, becoming the first man to cross the Atlantic single-handed. Over 150,000 people were present to see him arrive, and a delicate and graceful statue marking this event can still be found on site today.

As passenger numbers increased and to meet the needs of the large numbers of visitors expected for the 1937 Universal Exhibition, a new airport structure was required. The architect Georges Labro won the competition and designed a subtle, yet powerful 233m long building. The structure was a success, and with 21,000 flights and 138,000 passengers in 1939, Le Bourget became Europe’s second largest airport. But then war broke out.

Requisitioned and transformed by German troops, it was later almost entirely destroyed by allied bombardments during the liberation of Paris. However, being the only airport in Paris at the time, rapid reconstruction was needed once the war had finished, and it was Georges Labro who took on the job again, rebuilding the structure in almost its exact previous form. Passenger traffic eventually reached 600,000 travellers a year, but after the Orly, then Roissy airports were built, Le Bourget gradually slipped back into provincial obscurity.

The old and the new; an Airbus A380 flies over Le Bourget.

Despite the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace taking up residence in the airport structures in the 1970s, we should not make the mistake of thinking that the entire site has become a museum. Today Le Bourget is Europe’s busiest airport for private and business traffic, and the hangars still resonate with the noise of creation and repair. These magnificent reinforced concrete structures give a glimpse of what the site looked like in the 1920s. Built by Henri Lossier in 1922, these massive 15m by 50m units were damaged in the war and slightly adjusted afterwards, but the basic forms we see today are identical to the originals.

Although the building was saved by the installation of the museum, it does seem today to be in need of the planned restoration project. The white marble exteriors are grey and crumbling, and green shoots are sprouting out of inaccessible corners. It is interesting also to see the carved sculptures on the façade held in place by netting. These figures were designed as a celebration of the far-flung French colonies, but it seems strangely apt today to see them represented as people being tied up and ensnared.

Despite these problems, Labro’s main airport building remains an architectural wonder and a rare glimpse of a unique period in history. The charming curves and timeless design should ensure that once restored, the building will still have a very long life ahead of it, even if the footsteps of passengers are now a muffled sound of the past.

Note: If you more interested in aviation than architecture, Owen has some great photos of the Paris Air Show on his blog.