The Critical Mass: French Mass housing and Culture
An extract of my research at the Architectural Association.
In France, an F4 apartment is the general dwelling with 4 rooms: a kitchen a living room, 3 rooms and an alcove. F stands for fonction (function), the number goes from 1 to 6 rooms and the dwelling dimension is from 66 to 73sqm. (Arrêté du 1er mars 1978 relatif aux normes de surfaces et d’habitabilité des logements nancés à l’aide de prêts conventionnés).
This type of accommodation was the most replicated in mass production of Grands Ensembles, the symbol of all modern architecture ambitions in a state-led modern-urbanism in the context of reconstruction of the country through a modernization which would be the promise for a limitless development after the trauma of World War II. The state was thus massively involved in a relentless process of rational organisation of French territory by the large and massive production of modern architectures, indeed the highest in terms of quantity throughout the Europe of post-war reconstruction. (1) Moreover, F4 includes all aspects that have characterised the production of housing throughout the Tente Glorieuses (2) and brought it to the re-definition of the French social fabric. The strong power that the state acquired during the reconstruction period affected not only the French territory to large scale urban planning (through the creation of an impressive amount of new and modern neighbourhoods), but also in the subtle social politics that take real substance in the definition of the family that lives inside the F4 dwelling.
Moreover, the realisation of Grands Ensembles through the instrument of the plan de masse (3) is part and parcel of welfare state policies that favoured the growth of a middle class, influencing the ways of life of citizens, starting from the basic cell of the household. So F4 is the persistent repetitively of modern mass produced dwellings that normalised and trivialised domesticity. They hosted the new “model family”, founding element of social reform of the post-war nation in which became increasingly evident the State intervention in the social realm of everyday life. The latter has been the subject of study in the fields of culture, social sciences and architecture. Many architect’s main aspiration between 1940s and 1950s was to achieve a logement exacte (exact dwelling) that goes to improve the notion of “minimum dwelling” so “from the 1950s they (the architects) will not considerate the notion of minimum dwelling because it had a pejorative connotation, but they will adopt the idea of an average dwelling for the average family which is composed by the father, the mother and two or three children (fig. 1). This was the ideal type of French family which was highly advertised in France from 1950s to 1970s (a period in which 95% of French new housing are realized)”. (4) This ideal of the family unit was present not only in all contemporary architecture magazines, but also in the new television, in women’s magazines and national newspapers, which enthusiastically praised this new and modern way of living, fully equipped of most modern technologies. The interventions of pouvoirs publics (public powers) were accepted and defended by the media of that time, in a climate of general enthusiasm.
F4 is the microcosm in which architecture (but also urban planning and the brand new design), combined with a political and economic program, was able to change enormously not only the society but individuals who compose it. The dynamics of Grands Ensembles, therefore, is not only the background of a process of social change on a national scale, but is a founding element of such a change. For this reason the Grands Ensembles enclose all the complexities and contradictions of French society so any representation of the latter is intrinsically linked to the story of the former, as happens for instance in French films of that time. Hence, I will analyse the complex dynamics of this phenomenon through three famous French films documenting the moments of transition in the history of French dwelling and, in parallel, I will talk about some successful examples of architectures and architects that can inspire further reflections on the theme of middle-class housing.
So briefly, the enthusiasm of modernization would create the conditions for social uprising that put an end to the policies of the Grands Ensembles, but in the wave of that rebellion the feeling of exclusion of those emigrated in Grands Ensembles evokes the hidden side of this modern and wealthier society: that of its relationship with the colonial past. F4 remains unchanging element of an evolving process, core of all French contradictions. As a matter of fact, this typology of dwelling unit has simultaneously succeeded, because it has helped make the imaginary ideal family a real fact, and failed, because it was the main cause of a series of rebellions that have to do with the intimacy of the family unit. It therefore represents the static nature of a system that no longer suits today’s society, but despite legislative instruments is persisting in housing design.
MENTAL CLEANING
“The speed with which French society was transformed after the War from a rural, empire-oriented, Catholic country into a fully industrialized, decolonized and urban one meant that the things that modernization needed – educated middle managers, for instance, or affordable automobiles and other ‘mature’ consumer durables, or a set of social sciences that followed scientific, functionalist models, or a work force of ex- colonial labourers – burst onto a society that still cherished pre-war outlooks with all the force, excitement, disruption, and horror of the genuinely new.” Ross Kristin, Decolonization and the reordering of French culture, MIT Press, 1996
In the decades prior to 1945 the French State had a very limited engagement in the construction industry, it is only from that moment that it took charge of national reconstruction through both “National economic plans” and “Reconstruction plans”. The accommodation, together with all aspects of daily life, becomes (especially with the Second Economic Plan by Minister Monnet and the financial help of the Marshall Plan)5 a key element of the process of economic development, of which the national political powers will handle all aspects of production: economic, social and technical. France then shifted to a total “planning state” in which “the user — whether as an abstract universal, a statistical entity identified with the nuclear family, a normative figure subject to modernization, an active participant of neighbourhood life, a free consumer, or a protesting militant — was at once a policy and design category of policy and an agent of the built environment”. (6)
Comfort is definitely the keyword of this social and urban renewal because it was absolutely absent in the tradition of previous French dwellings. A large part of Parisian homes had not and still do not have a private bathroom, most often shared. Many French apartments in the post-war period had no hot water or even running water and electricity or gas; the aim of public powers was therefore to ensure – in an initial condition of urgency – minimum standards of comfort. So in 1953, only 9% of the population had running water and central heating, the 8.5% of the population had a washing machine and, although it had been imported from the United States since 1910 with the brand “Frigidaire”, only 7.5% of housing had a refrigerator, due also to its high cost. It later became a goal of the public authorities to ensure living standards more suitable to modern lifestyles (fig.5, 6).
The transition from a situation of urgency and necessity (for essential biological needs and hygiene) and the identification of the dwelling as the main domain of consumption (i.e. “domestic consumption”) is very short. Alongside the search for highest standards of comfort they lay all the vicissitudes related to the French dwelling unit, so “in the consumer society is no longer sufficient to have hot water and modern equipment to be happy. It is no longer sufficient to have light and air in order to have a beautiful life … but the comfort was other things…“. (7) The France of wellness saw its unlimited growth through consumption, referring to the American capitalist model. The French citizen, entranced by the new modern way of life, bought consumer goods for the home: washing machines, cookers, refrigerators (fig.4). The woman, wife, mother and worker reads in magazines like Marie- Claire how to use these machines and every year, in the Salon des arts ménagers in Paris8 it is taught to average citizens how and what to consume (fig.3). In this regard, the big advertising campaign in favour of personal hygiene care is highly illustrative because it is linked to the presence of a bathroom with running water in all new housing units of cités modernes (fig.2). A massive production of soap for personal hygiene is related, inter alia, to the use of soap for the new domestic machines. The “civilizing mission” of the state, which in the strength of his powers recalls the colonial heritage, is to clean: clean the past (consisting of filthy and pestilent ilots insalubres) and cleaning the bodies of new French citizens. This new, clean and civilized society is increasingly distant from the dirt and the incivility of the colonial populations. (9)
The increase of wealth and the passage into mass culture and consumption led to the acceptance of an uneven development and therefore the inevitable differences of class, which are woefully behind todays problems with the Parisian banlieue. During the same period, as a matter of fact, France is fighting against the Algerian nationalist revolutionary movements (the culmination of the war is in 1956), phenomena of torture and exhausting struggles are censored by the French press. The attitude of “erasure of the colonial past” has, thus, historical roots and is the basis of today’s misunderstandings and resentments against the immigrant population. (10) The first migratory waves of citizens from the colonies (but also from Portugal, Italy etc.) dates back to the period of production of Grands Ensembles, in which the construction industry had an enormous need for labour. The immigrant workers were therefore accepted in large numbers on French soil and began crowding near the new, modern neighbourhoods, populating bidonvilles like that of Nanterre, famous for having contributed to the birth of May 1968 revolts.
This process demonstrates, once again, the French “bipolarity” which fostered through modernist architecture the peaceful coexistence of different social classes, to accommodate a man indiscriminately in need of some comfort related to his state of nature (the concept of “mixité” is often recalled in French housing projects) and then, a sad setback in accepting class differences, reminiscent of 19th-century housing interventions. (11) The problem is that with immigrations, the social differences would identify with ethnic differences and – subsequent to the abandonment of the middle class of the Grands Ensembles – will create a clear spatial division within the most exemplary French city, that of Paris: the Boulevard Péripherique will be the blurred borderline between the endless progress (and fascination of technology, which is related to a first phase of Grands Ensembles), the acceptance of the policies of everyday life (related to the subsequent social revolts, second phase), the mental cleaning of the past and the distinction from the stranger (which are both the premise of Grands Ensembles and the third final phase, which establish their end and failure).
(The remaining part of the text can be found here.)
Notes:
During the 1950s and 1960s around 60% of French population lived in Grands Ensembles while today about 10 millions people still live in there, which represents almost 1/6 of the entire French population.
“Tente Glorieuses” (Glorious thirties) (1945-1973), period of great economic growth of France.
“Plan de masse” is de ned as “The point of contact between the planner and architect, the point where the planner stops and the architect begins – always in full coordination of ideas and discipline – is the plan de masse. The plan de masse is an architectural complex integrated organically into the urban plan. Whatever be its importance and scale, it is the work of an architect whom expresses the solution adopted in the place and time. The Master Plan is linked the notion of permanence and achievements over several stages. The plan de masse is an immediate realizationstage, it must meet the data and possibilities, as well as the reality of the period it is conceived.” Esprit du plan de masse de l’habitat, G. Candilis, Architecture d’aujourd’hui 57, 1954.
Lionel Engrand in a interview with the author, April 13, 2015.
Plan Monnet (1952-57), Marshall Plan (1948).
Kenny Cupers, “The Social Project,” Places Journal, April 2014. Accessed 10 Apr 2015. <https://placesjournal.org/ article/the-social-project/>
Lionel Engrand in a interview with the author, April 13, 2015.
“Salon des arts ménagres” took place in the Grand Palais in Paris from 1923 to 1983, with a boom of af uences in the 1950s.
Kristin Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and the Reordering of French Culture (Cambridge: MIT press, 1995) Ilots insalubres (unhealty blocks) were portion of the existing fabric of Paris in which, due to the overcrowding conditions, there was a high death rate because of the tragic hygienic conditions.
Idem.
Mixité is the coexistence of people from different socio-professional categories whitin the same environment (or neighborhood). In France, within the “law of July 13, 1991, of orientation for the city”, the mixié is envisaged as a means of reducing exclusions and the social divide. For several decades, mixité became the master word of urban policies. The ‘law solidarity and urban renewal’ (SRU) (13 December 2000) thus emphasises the need to adapt the current housing supply to total revenues. The realization of HLM (Habitation à loyer modéré) and a consistent rental offer, will be then, according to the public authorities, a response to a good social mix. For more informations about Franch housing in the 19th- century interventions see: J.Lucan, Eau et gaz a tous les étages, 100 ans de logement, Paris, 1992.
