Paris Under Construction

Building Sites and Urban Transformation in the 1960s

Jacob Paskins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317379454
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Aménagement urbain et paysager

During the 1960s, building sites in Paris became spaces that expressed preoccupations about urban transformation, labour immigration and national identity. As new buildings and infrastructure changed the city, building sites revealed the substandard living and working conditions of migrant construction workers in France. Moreover, construction was the touchstone in debates about the dangers of urban life, and triggered action in communities whose districts faced demolition. Paris Under Construction explores the social, political and cultural responses to construction work and urban transformation in the Paris metropolitan region during the 1960s. This examination of a decade of intensive building work considers the ways in which the experience of construction was mediated, produced and reproduced through a range of complex and sometimes contradictory representations. The building sites that produced the new Paris are no longer visible, and were perhaps never intended to be seen, yet different groups closely observed and recorded construction, giving it meanings that went beyond specific building activities. The research draws extensively on French newspaper, television and radio archives, and delves into rarely examined trade union material. Paris Under Construction gives voice to the witnesses of—and participants in—urban transformation who are usually excluded from architectural and urban history.

1 Building Sites and Nation Building

“Year 2000 is in the air,” announced a cinema newsreel in 1965. The report played on the fears and fantasies of the new millennium, still some thirty-five years in the future, but impatiently anticipated by a frenzy of media representations. The newsreel opens with a shot of a mushroom cloud rising from a nuclear explosion. Accompanied by a menacing orchestral rumble, the report heralded anxieties about nuclear destruction. But the newsreel soon moves on to more optimistic visions of the year 2000 as it showcases experimental clothing fashions and contemporary architecture, including the Maison de la Radio, which had opened in Paris in 1963. Set to the soundtrack of the James Bond film Goldfinger, the closing sequence portrays women modelling an array of plastic clothing, inspired by the so-called space-age collection of André Courrèges. The models appear before a backdrop of the concrete pilotis of the new power station in Champagne-sur-Oise, in the outer limits of the Paris region (“Le mythe James Bond” 1965). Another newsreel from 1966, showcasing plastic bathing suits, similarly mixes cutting-edge fashion with new architecture. Women model items from Paco Rabanne’s conceptual collection, which features bikinis, tunics and earrings fabricated from colourful Rhodoïd discs, cut from plastic sheets and fastened with metal links, fashioned like chain mail. The opening sequence is filmed outside the high-rise apartment blocks of the Sarcelles-Lochères grand ensemble. Each shot of the models, who also don plastic visors, is framed with the strong vertical and horizontal lines of the housing blocks (“Plastique sous plastique” 1966). Both newsreel reports suggest that the new and unrecognisable city of the year 2000 was not the work of science fiction, but already existed. Avant-garde fashion became the location manager’s top choice to dress the latest architecture.

During the 1960s, the popular media in France was obsessed with the prospect of the new millennium, still a generation away. As newsreels and television programmes set out to record the latest fashions in clothing and architecture, construction work was already an unavoidable part of everyday life. In Paris and its suburbs, projects abounded to build new roads, housing and factories. Building sites were evidence that the year 2000, and “the century that everyone is dreaming about,” was on its way. Newspaper reports fantasised impatiently about the future, and tried to convince readers that the new century was already emerging today as new forms of the built environment (PL 1963b; Sarazin 1966; Hannecart 1966).

Paris was witnessing a spectacular transformation. By the mid-1960s, few districts were unmarked by building sites as renovation, demolition or new construction began to appear seemingly around every corner. The scale of development was unprecedented, as was the variety of major infrastructure projects in and around the city. The voie express rive gauche began to plough a high-speed road through the heart of Paris, along the banks of the Seine, linking the boulevard périphérique ring road that was beginning to snake its way around the perimeters of the city. Underpasses and underground car parks started to address the increasing population of motor vehicles, and attempt to free up congested streets. A little further afield, on the edges of Paris, elevated road junctions, bridges and motorways promised a car-filled future and rapid individual transport.

The “city of the year 2000” would not just be a world of cars. Major transport infrastructure under construction included an underground express railway, new railway stations and the continued electrification of suburban lines. By the end of the 1960s, a new airport would emerge from the vast plains of Roissy-en-France. If new transport systems brought modernity to thousands of commuters, modernisation of basic amenities was an even more pressing matter. New power stations, gas and electrical infrastructure, water treatment plants and reservoirs, and new telephone and postal systems began to bring Paris in line with the expectations of a modern city.

Figure 1.1 Construction of an elevated section of the boulevard périphérique leading to the quai d’Issy junction and bridge across the Seine, April 1967. Part of the former fortifications of Paris are just visible to the right of the image. The football pitch is now used as Paris heliport.

Source: Coll. Pavillon de l’Arsenal, cliché DUVP.

A rapidly growing and young population brought other demands on city life. There was an urgent need to provide new education facilities, from crèches to schools, and technical colleges to universities. Healthcare provision needed major investment, resulting in the construction of hospitals and clinics. To keep a population healthy and fit, new swimming pools, gymnasia and sports stadia provided leisure facilities. The expanding population needed housing, so construction continued on housing estates in suburban towns that had begun in earnest in the 1950s. Grands ensembles were not restricted to the suburbs. Some parts of Paris, especially in the outer arrondissements, became home to high-rise housing estates. These major projects resulted in the demolition of numerous districts, while in other parts of town historic monuments became the focus of restoration work.

Some of the most prominent building sites were reserved for new business or administration facilities. La Défense, in the western suburbs, was already unrecognisable, emerging as a high-rise business district beside the giant concrete-vaulted span of the Centre des nouvelles industries et technologies (CNIT, or Centre of New Industries and Technology). Designed by Robert Camelot, Jean de Mailly and Bernard Zehrfuss, the CNIT was completed in 1958 as an exhibition centre and was joined from the 1960s by a vast concrete deck (dalle) that would conceal an underground ensemble of roads, stations and facilities. Elsewhere, new administrative buildings rose from suburban fields to serve as centrepieces for new towns, while in Paris the Maison de la Radio, designed by Henry Bernard, became an architectural showcase and new headquarters for state radio and television.¹

This proliferation of construction was among the most prized expressions of French economic growth. Politicians and press alike hailed the first tidal electric power station on the Rance estuary and the Mont Blanc road tunnel as symbols of national grandeur (Lamarre 1963). Charles de Gaulle used the widespread construction work in progress during his return to power as a metaphor for the rebirth of the French nation. In a speech the president of the republic declared that the transformation of the capital city provided “a hope worthy of France, worthy of Paris and worthy of our time” (quoted in PL 1966a).

Progress in the modernisation of France became a benchmark for de Gaulle’s political success. In his 1966 new year televised speech, the president proudly announced that the previous year 210,000 telephone transmitters had been installed, 176km of motorway had been completed and 500 new factories had opened (PL 1966b). The popular press contributed to the myth of de Gaulle’s first-hand involvement in the transformation of Paris, and as a venerable figure at the head of great nation. In May 1966 the president participated in a whistle-stop tour ofconstruction sites across Paris. De Gaulle posed in front of the television and newsreel cameras as he scrutinised plans of the boulevard périphérique in military detail (PL 1966d; “Le général de Gaulle visite le Paris de l’an 2000” 1966; “De Gaulle à l’Hôtel de Ville” 1966).

Figure 1.2 Construction of the reinforced concrete deck above La Défense RER station, March 1967. The top level of the deck would become a pedestrian esplanade beside the CNIT. The lower levels in descending order would house bus and taxi stations, shops and ticket halls, and railway platforms. The A14 motorway would also pass through a lower level of the deck.

Source: © RATP.

Paul Delouvrier, the chief executive of the District de la région de Paris, was a staunch supporter of the government’s plans to transform Paris. He declared that the development of the Paris region would meet the needs of a growing population and reinforce the city’s status as one of the “world’s great, illustrious and lively metropolises” (1965). Influential figures within the building industry similarly situated building work within a nationalist discourse. Francis Bouygues, head of a large construction firm, believed increased urbanisation would transform France into “a great modern nation” (1963),² while the engineer and constructor Raymond Camus considered that technological development should serve the interests of the nation (Gall 1965). In light of the government’s ambitions to construct a modern nation, and its support from industry leaders, the local building site had been transformed into a space that expressed France’s international outlook, and made evident national preoccupations with economic growth and cultural identity.

Building activity represented France’s ambitions for national productivity and progress. Building construction and infrastructure development dominated the French economy during the 1960s. The sector enjoyed 10% annual growth during the Fourth Modernisation Plan that ran between 1962 and 1965. By the middle of the decade the building and public works industries produced 8.7% of the national GDP (G.M. 1965). In 1966, the civil engineering industry—known as travaux publics (pubic works), whether the construction was state-financed or private—had a turnover of 16.7 billion francs, just chasing the automobile industry’s turnover of 19 billion francs. Construction and public works employed around 289,500 people in the Paris region in 1962, or 7.3% of the working population, which represented 18.8% of construction activity in France (DGDP 1965, 204–5). By 1967, public works alone consumed up to 14% of France’s gross national expenditure (Le Monde 1967d). By 1970, some 1,647,300 people were employed in construction and public works in France—roughly 10% of the national working population (“La main-d’oeuvre dans le bâtiment” 1974, S9).

During the 1960s, production in the construction industry grew rapidly. In 1965, 410,000 housing units were built in France, of which 140,000 were low-rent habitations à loyer modéré (HLM) units. Some 20,000 HLM were produced in the Paris region alone. To give an idea of the extraordinary growth in output, just ten years earlier around 180,000 units were produced nationwide, and output increased by over 11% between 1964 and 1965 alone (PL 1965g). While housing construction dominated the industry, a swathe of new public buildings were also under construction, including swimming pools, schools, hospitals and university campuses. In May 1966 Christian Fouchet, the education minister, announced the government was spending 10 million francs a day in the school construction programme (PL 1966e).

The urban transformation of greater Paris was a dramatic spectacle that provided continuous fodder for mainstream media organisations to produce a discourse about the rebirth of a nation. Gaullist politicians became similarly swept up in the excitement about the emerging Paris of 2000, and endeavoured to celebrate the national grandeur of France. It was no coincidence that the city should become the stage for extolling the virtues and confidence of France. The government was eager to shore up the nation’s status and identity after years of social, political and urban upheaval caused by the 1939–45 war and more recent colonial conflicts. The building site had a key role to play in asserting France’s new identity. French construction and engineering lay at the heart of building a modern nation.

Architects, politicians and the media conspired to make construction and modern architecture French. This assertion of French identity was in part a continuation of the stand-off between France and the United States that had been playfully enacted since the early days of modernism. But the greatest imperative to build French was to reassert territorial claim over Paris in the wake of the ravages of the Algerian war. This new focus on Paris was unprecedented in a century of urban planning. The result was a thorough reorganisation of territorial administration and the development of an urban master plan for the Paris region. Nothing could stop the emergence of the city of the year 2000 as Paris became theatre to the din of cement mixers, bulldozers and jack hammers.

Building the Nation

Throughout his ten-year presidency, Charles de Gaulle insisted enthusiastically that France was one of the strongest countries in the world. The first president of the Fifth Republic wished to consolidate France’s position on the international stage in order to restore the “grandeur” and “rank” that the country had supposedly enjoyed in an earlier era (Tatu 2009). Politicians, civil servants and the popular press were preoccupied with upholding a strong sense of French national identity during the 1960s. De Gaulle fought for French financial independence, symbolically launching the new franc in 1960 (worth 100 old francs) in a bid to shake off France’s dependency on Marshall Plan loans. The same year the president stubbornly pushed for military independence by ordering France’s first atomic bomb tests, before withdrawing the country’s directorship of NATO in 1966. In an attempt to place France at the centre of international diplomacy, de Gaulle received the presidents of both the United States of America and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War (Winock 1987, 41–2, 196).

Like most mainstream political movements in France, Gaullism defended the foundational republican values of liberty, equality and fraternity. Fierce national pride was characteristic of a political and educative system that distinguished France as a leading light of modern civilisation. Writing under his regular pseudonym “Sirius,” Hubert Beuve-Méry, editor of the respected newspaper of record Le Monde, observed in 1959 that the government was worried France would lose its traditional sovereign claim as the founder of modern free society. As a consequence, he wrote, the president had obstinately refused to sign the European Convention on Human Rights—drafted in 1950—fearing the new charter would overshadow the France’s much treasured Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen that had stood at the heart of the country’s constitutions since 1789 (Sirius 2009). Various institutions were eager to protect the French language from the increasing dominance of English. Two graduates of the École polytechnique established the Comité d’étude des termes techniques français in 1954 to find suitable new French words for foreign-language scientific and technical terms (Hecht 1998, 40). Four years later, a group of journalist...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 Building Sites and Nation Building
• 2 Politics on the Building Site
• 3 Housing Builders: Constructing Inequality
• 4 The Building Site Next Door
• 5 Building Site Accidents: Construction in Crisis
• Epilogue: Cities Under Construction
• Index