Brutalist Paris: Les Étoiles d'Ivry

 

Les Étoiles d'Ivry are a group of buildings located in the city center of Ivry-sur-Seine 5 km away from the center of Paris.

In the 1960s, the municipality decided to rebuild the city center, removing the old housing. The district was designed by architects Renée Gailhoustet and Jean Renaudie. It was the result of reflections on new forms of social housing. The star shape and the terraces are characteristic of Jean Renaudie's work, which broke the standardization of the 1950s and 1960s. The district buildings contain housing, cultural facilities and shops and traffic routes. The apartments have garden terraces, which are arranged in the concrete cascading pyramids.

Jean Renaudi in his practice designed a form of architecture that, due to its starkness and the simplicity, is described as 'Brutalist'. The Jeanne-Hachette Centre (the part of the disctrict) gave him international recognition. Jean Renaudi never wished to systematise architecture. He created a wide variety and diversity of apartments in his housing projects.

Renée Gailhoustet was one of the few female architects of her generation. The quality of life was central to her practice. She rejected the principle of strict separation of functions that prevails in many large housing estates. instead, she created the "interweaving of functions": housing, commerce and public services are mixed in her projects. The residences she created were non-standardized as well.

Designing multi-level and open floor plans with the accent on individual terraces, she offered to residents a quality of architecture that is not typical for social housing. Her preferred building material was "béton brut" – unfinished concrete.

The Royal Academy Architecture Award 2022 – that of acknowledging work judged to have made a ‘significant impact on society’ – has been presented to the 92-year-old Renée Gailhoustet for her work as the chief architect-planner of Ivry-sur-Seine, "for her extraordinary and precient contribution to social housing in France and her inspirational approach to building communities and urban planning".

The full video episode is on our Youtube channel