Re-transcription of a Le Corbusier apartment in a new museum: the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine in Paris.

Transcription

1 Re-transcription of a Le Corbusier apartment in a new museum: the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine in Paris. The museum reconstitution of a Le Corbusier apartment from Marseille s Cité radieuse is a project which would never have seen the day without the creation of the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine. This new Parisian institution is the expression of the long-held wish of two men: of François Barré, previously director of the Pompidou Center and also, at that time, director of architecture and heritage at the ministry of Culture, and of Jean-Louis Cohen, architectural historian and professor at New-York University. Both expressed the wish for a Parisian architectural institution or centre capable of ranking alongside those in London, Frankfurt and Stockholm. This wish became a reality in 1998 when it was supported by the minister for Culture at the time, Mrs Catherine Trauttmann. This Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine did not emerge ex nihilo. It finds its raison d être and historical justification in the ancient Musée de sculpture compareé (Museum of comparative sculpture), initiated in 1878 by Viollet-le-Duc (PHOTO 1-2) which later became in 1937 the Musée des Monuments français (museum of French Monuments) (PHOTO 3). The existing collections present, chronologically, fragments from the great casts of French medieval churches as well as copies of medieval and Renaissance paintings commissioned and presented to the public by the curator Paul Deschamps from 1937 onwards (PHOTO 4-5). These two collections follow a similar principle: the most faithful possible life-size reproduction or transcription of the original work. This historic collection of the Musée des monuments français, which will be presented in two galleries whose themes are essentially medieval and Renaissance (PHOTO 6-7), is completed by a third, new gallery dedicated to modern and contemporary architecture. This gallery doesn t intend to prolong the existing collections, but to present, thematically, the great historical and technical changes as well as the continuities in French and foreign architecture from 1850 to our days (PHOTO 8). This modern and contemporary gallery attempts to respond to some of the current questioning concerning architecture and the world of architects, and to clarify the reading and understanding of architectural projects. Indeed contemporary architecture in France suffers today from an extraordinary lack of recognition by the public. This fact, as well as the difficulties of presenting architecture in a museum, account for the thematic approach chosen for this modern and contemporary gallery which is organised in two major sections: Conceiving and building on the one hand and Architecture and society on the other. The first section explores the work of the architect and the different stages in the elaboration of an architectural project, the second section explores the relationships between commissioners, builders and users or inhabitants. A variation of different supports including models, plans, film and photography will help contextualise the different themes and encourage the public to answer apparently simple questions such as: What are cities made up of? How does an architect work? Why do we need architects? A life-size apartment from Marseille s Cité radieuse will be presented in the section Architecture and society, to illustrate the context of the Reconstruction in France after the Second World War. Indeed, Le Corbusier played an important role as architect, urban planner and thinker. He thought he could apply almost universally his principles for a new way of being and living through the development of structures inciting new sociability (PHOTO 9). His idea was to offer every working-class family a tailor-suited apartment incorporating every

2 modern comfort of the 1950 s, flooded with natural light, allowing for the independence of each family member within the apartment and providing at the same time, for each apartment, access to essential community and shopping services within the building (PHOTO 10-14). It is thus only natural that the re-transcription of a Le Corbusier apartment from Marseille s Cité radieuse should find a place in this part of the modern and contemporary gallery of the museum. Once the decision had been taken to transcribe in the gallery a specific apartment from Marseille s Cité radieuse - a two-floored ascending apartment - the question arose of how this apartment would be made, and by whom. The ordinary practice would have been to commission an architect to do a precise survey of the existing apartment in Marseille and to entrust the construction of it to specialised building and engineering companies. But another solution altogether was adopted. It suddenly seemed much richer, and more relevant with regards to the educational mission assigned to the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine, to seize the opportunity of this construction to inscribe it in a much larger and more ambitious educational project by associating technical and professional schools of the Ile-de-France region instead of contracting building companies, thus opening a long-term partnership with National Education. Some convincing had to be done to overcome the expressed anxieties of some teachers from these professional schools who feared this project would put them in a situation of pressure and dependency, like that experienced by an ordinary building company towards its commissioner. It was therefore essential to clearly express the terms of the collaboration and to set up an official partnership between the ministry for National Education and the ministry for Culture. A convention stating the terms and conditions of the collaboration was signed, engaging the responsibility of both parts. Each professional school preparing a specific discipline, it was necessary to identify the different stages and parts of the construction of the apartment and dispatch them according to the specialities of each school: metalwork, concrete, plumbing, carpentry, electricity (PHOTO 15-18) The resulting project is the programmed construction of the apartment in in the modern and contemporary gallery, with the active participation of no less than seventeen schools. To engage the participation of technical and professional schools represented, for the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine, an opening to issues at once educational, professional, social and cultural. An educational dimension for the school students involved NB: The following explanations will be a little bit tedious, and I apologise in advance for this, but I feel it is necessary to explain the functioning of the French educational system Students from professional and technical schools all hope to graduate with a professional degree which, since a reform of 1992, is granted only once the student has completed his/her compulsory training period in a professional company and the results have been evaluated by both teachers and professionals. In the context of the Le Corbusier project, the time spent on the construction of a part of the apartment in the school workshop counts towards the preparation of these professional

3 degrees, including the following: Certificat d aptitude professionelle (CAP), Brevet d études professionals (BEP) and Baccalauréat professionnel (Bac pro). The same can be said of the work that will be carried out on the building-site in the Chaillot palace: it will be credited as professional training and will contribute to the completion of the degree. Two schools specialised in photography and audiovisual have been asked to record the different stages of the project and the assembling of the apartment on the building-site. The scheduling and planning of the project is complex, as it requires making compatible examination time-tables with the strict requirements of a building-site. Inevitably, the Le Corbusier building-site, for both technical and administrative reasons, was severely delayed, and as a consequence, several generations of students since have participated in the project. Benefiting from a number of programs already set up by the Ministry for National Education, teachers of the general disciplines (literature, sciences, maths, fine art, history and geography) in the technical and professional schools involved, were able to exploit the project in their respective classes. Two programs in particular were used to further exploit the Le Corbusier project: the classes à projet d action culturelle (PAC) and the classes à projet pluridisciplinaire à caractère professionel (PPCP). These two programs, supported by the academies and by educational inspection, gave the teaching teams in each school, the means to innovate and to participate in the Le Corbusier Project. Yet these means offered by the Ministry for National Education, would not have been as effective or operational if the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine hadn t first set up a training program for the teachers themselves. An educational dimension for the teachers involved It seemed important to offer parallel training to the teams of teachers involved in the Le Corbusier project so that they may then in turn, and within the scope of their different disciplines, increase the students knowledge and awareness of modern architecture. A teacher s training program was therefore put together in 2002, offering the teachers two or three study days a year on urban planning and modern architecture (PHOTO 19) This training was an answer to a specific request from the teachers involved in the project wishing to work with their classes on Le Corbusier and the modern movement, the disciplines of art history and architectural history being entirely absent from the educational curriculum in French schools and colleges. Organised around themes such as Urban utopias from 1820 to 2000, the heritage of Le Corbusier in contemporary architecture, a comparative vision of architecture by artists, writers and sociologists etc, these study days were opportunities to invite cultural and intellectual personalities, specialists on different subjects (such as Roger Aujame for example, ancient collaborator of le Corbusier, Gérard Monnier, architectural historian, Philippe Godard, writer, Thierry Paquot, philosopher, Arlette Despond-Barré, specialist in design and applied arts ). These days were intended to widen the teacher s perspective in terms of cultural and artistic references. The places where these study days were held were carefully chosen and were often emblematic architectural creations: Oscar Niemeyer s headquarters for the French communist party, Albert Laprade s palace of the colonies (PHOTO 20) which later became the museum of African and Oceanic art, Jacques Ripault s museum of contemporary art in a Parisian suburb, etc. The study days started with a visit of the building and a first-hand architectural lesson.

4 Urban walks in Paris and its suburbs were also organised to increase the teacher s sensitivity at reading and understanding the city (PHOTO 21-22). Lastly, all the classes participating in the Le Corbusier project benefited from a study trip to Marseille, to allow students and teachers alike to discover and familiarise themselves with an apartment of Marseille s Cité radieuse - which most of them only knew from the fragment they have been asked to reproduce in their respective school workshops (PHOTO 23-26). These trips to Marseille were also used by the head-teachers (in a professional school, the head-teacher is the coordinator of all the practical, technical classes), to check on the exact measurements and the general aspect in situ of the part of the apartment his school was responsible for. The observations made in Marseille were precious as they helped the teachers decipher and understand the architect s execution plans with which they were working. These educational programs offered to both teachers and students, assembled all partners around a single project, forging year after year a common culture and a common interest. The study days and the study trips to Marseille also gave scientific and technical weight to the Le Corbusier project. Social and cultural issues at stake Involving a population of school students in an architectural construction project has been an ambitious and complex project. It required regular adjustments, and a continued effort to listen closely to the different points of view and demands of the different partners. An lot of energy was deployed by the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine as by the architects coordinating the project, who, every fortnight, visited a different school workshop to encourage and advise the teachers working on a part of the apartment (PHOTO 27). This energy would have been rapidly spent if an awareness of the social and cultural dimensions of the project weren t shared by all. From the very start, this project represented an emblematic action. In an educational environment where the orientation of young people towards professional training is regarded as a default orientation, a project such as ours had for ambition to promote the skills of the professional and technical schools and the nobility of related jobs in the construction and building industries. What population is concerned by this action? Young people aged 16 to 20, coming for the most part, from underprivileged backgrounds of the Parisian region, having often experienced earlier difficulties at school. It is this population that the professional and technical schools attempt to conciliate with success by teaching them a job. With the Le Corbusier project, the students are to become constructors of a unique object, recognised as such and presented to the public in a prestigious Parisian museum. Most of the school students discovered for the first time through the project (through the study days, the guided tours and the urban walks) the architectural and historical richness of the cities of Paris and Marseille. They met important personalities such as Prime Minister M. Raffarin in 2005 (PHOTO 28-29: you cannot imagine how important it was for these students to meet a symbol of the Republic!), and a number of journalists and interested members of the public at the exhibition openings (I will talk about these exhibitions later). Other important enterprises of this nature had been initiated during the great building campaigns of François Mitterrand in the late 1980 s (Great arch of La Défense, the Louvre pyramid etc.): a group of young people aged 18 to 25 that had come out of the school system without qualifications were trained by building and engineering companies (Bouygues, Spie

5 Batignolles etc). The importance for these young people, of their implication in such great stately projects, has already been underlined at the time. In the same way, with the Le Corbusier project, the participation of these young people to a unique work of art, the greatest model in Europe, is a powerful dynamic levier. The cultural opening that the Le Corbusier approach has already brought is immense. No other museum, it seems, up until today, has dared take the risk of asking school students to build a part of its museography. The museum object becomes accessible to a population who ordinarily doesn t visit museums. For all of these reasons combined, it has been decided that the names of all the school students who have participated in the project will appear in the museum, next to the constructed apartment. A re-transcription in several phases After having exposed the general organisation of the project, its principles and its intentions, it seems important now to present briefly the different stages of the re-transcription of the Le Corbusier apartment. Once the different partners had familiarised themselves with the specificities and the challenges of the project, it was decided that the schools involved should start off by producing mock life-size fragments of the apartment to start identifying and resolving any problems that might arise in the definitive construction (PHOTO 30-32). This work was a first opportunity for an active collaboration between the schools and the architects commissioned by the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine to draw up of the different plans. These architects were Fernando Marza, from the GAO agency in Barcelona, and Stéphane Zamfirescu. These first plans made apparent the workload for each part of the apartment and it was then easier to dispatch these parts amongst the different schools. From this phase onwards, the Fondation Le Corbusier was closely associated to the research and the project exhibitions that followed. The construction of the first mock parts of the apartment was followed carefully by the commissioners in concertation with the GAO agency and an architect specialised in historic monuments, Pierre-Antoine Gatier. The architectural fragments of the apartment produced by the schools in the context of their respective classes were exercises introducing the skills they would have to put to use when working on the future apartment: concrete shells, concrete elements from the loggia, models to test the colour scheme, kitchen furniture, metallic structure, fragment of the stairs, etc. These first fragments were the object of an official presentation in the form of an exhibition at the Cité universitaire in Paris in September 2004 (see the special edition of Urbanisme (n 25) dedicated to this subject) (PHOTO 33-34). The exhibition, in which were also shown several archive and historic documents about the building of Marseille s Cité radieuse, was met with great interest by the public. It has become a travelling exhibition: in May 2005, it was shown in Le Corbusier unité d habitation in Firminy (near Saint-Etienne), at the moment it is being shown at Saint-Quentin en Yvelines, in the outskirts of Paris, and next autumn it will be shown in Marseille. Special efforts were made to communicate the success of this first important stage in the project: reports, publications (PHOTO 35-36), exhibitions, contacts with financial sponsors (and in particular with the Conseil Régional d Ile-de-France), all helped promote the work of the school students and their teachers. A new website, which I invite you to consult, summarizes these efforts of communication around the Project ( (PHOTO 37)

6 The quality of the relationships tied between the different partners and the team coordinating the project at the museum, bear witness to the bridge that had been crossed between two professional fields that previously almost ignored each other. However, before the construction of the apartment starts in , it seems important not to disregard the difficulties encountered to this day by the different partners in the project, but on the contrary to discuss them and to try and learn from them. The difficulty of making the school calendar coincide with the requirements of a real building-site, was not sufficiently assessed at the start of the project. Delays to the buildingsite of the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine affected our project and required that the programmed school interventions be postponed, sometimes till the following school year. Inversely, some schools had also overestimated the speed with which they could produce their part of the apartment and were forced to abandon part of their share of the project. Lastly, there were real comprehension difficulties as the architects started off by submitting complex plans that couldn t be used as such by the teachers in the classroom: another architect had to intervene to transform the first lot of plans in helpful, execution plans. The architects clashed over two different approaches: a dispatching of the different parts of the apartment to build according to the school s specialities (masonry, carpentry etc.) and a separation of the different parts to build room by room (kitchen, bedroom, living-room etc.). Often, a part of the apartment was very poorly detailed and the original in Marseille had to be checked again and measured on site. These difficulties were discussed patiently and the problems progressively resolved with collective help, coordinated by the team at the museum. However, it seems essential today for each partner in this project to give an account of his experience in more detail so that we may learn from the memory of this unusual and perilous project. We are now entering the last phase of the project (thank-you for wishing us good luck!): the construction of the re-transcribed Le Corbusier apartment which will sit, from 2007, in the modern and contemporary gallery of the new museum. A model built to the exact same size as the original, a specificity of the Musée des Monuments français with its life-size collections of casts and wall-paintings. Open questions to conclude The unique particularities of the enterprise that we have just described are multiple. But as museum curator, I would like to conclude this presentation by drawing attention to some important questions and issues around the irruption of a large-scale new object in a museum. The nature of the work presented, its status and its legitimacy in a museum We should begin by questioning the very nature of this enterprise in the context of the creation of a Parisian museum. We have spoken all along of a transcription. But to qualify the spirit of this reconstitution project is far from simple and the choice of words and their use seem to override an acceptable and precise decision. Will the constructed apartment be a copy? A transposition? A re-transcription? Or even a restitution? A copy would imply an exact replica of an original giving the perfect illusion of the original (appearance, scale and fabric). But in this case, for didactical reasons, elements from the structure or the inner shell of the apartment will be left apparent and visible to the public. A transposition implies the passage of a concept, of an idea, from one object or site to another.

7 This would mean simplifying Le Corbusier s architectural thought and explaining it with the presentation of the apartment so as to make it accessible to a large public. It is clear that this didactic intention is partly present in our case. As for a re-transcription, it is a word that is as much used in music as it is in linguistics. It implies an arrangement, an adaptation. A music piece created for a symphonic orchestra is transcribed for a specific instrument; similarly, a phonetic transcription of one language to another facilitates its reading. In our case, we can talk of a transcription to describe the archaeological spirit with which the apartment is built, every complexity being reproduced in the limits of what is possible (some materials for example had to be substituted for technical reasons). Lastly, a restitution essentially implies the repair and reconstitution of the original from surviving fragments, which is evidently not what our project is about. One has to admit that not one of these qualifications is entirely satisfying and that our project is almost always at the confluence of these terms, even though the word re-transcription expresses most exactly what is being achieved. But beyond the difficulty we have to qualify the exact nature of what we are presenting, what meaning does this object take when it is presented in a museum? Museums usually tend to present original works in their galleries because of their historic interest or their aesthetic qualities. But the specificity of the museum of the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine is its didactic and educational vocation, already presenting copies of life-size casts and wallpaintings, and it is in this particular context that the installation of the life-size model of a Le Corbusier apartment finds significance and authority. This apartment will have been built by neither a building company, nor by craftsmen, nor by artists but by school students. Can a dignified national museum accept to display permanently a work with this kind of authorship? Isn t there a risk of it being undervalued and overlooked because of its uncertain status and its doubtful legitimacy? Could the perception of the apartment be limited to the vision of a model, understood only in its educational finality? This is indeed what is at stake here and the emblematic character of the Le Corbusier Project is at once revealed: to give the resulting apartment the status of an original work of art, to defend and treat it with the same legitimacy as every other artistic production, original or copy. This means recognizing the unique character of this non-duplicable, site-specific retranscription, displayed permanently in a precise place and becoming the last reference in the history of the re-transcription of Le Corbusier apartments. This approach also means recognizing the life-span of this work and, by placing it in a museum, granting it a sort of immortality. The presentation of the apartment will encourage the visitor to confront history and archaeology, to understand the uses of an extraordinary building, but also, if he is so inclined, to let himself be seduced in a simple contemplation of the work. Robert Dulau, Curator for heritage at the Cité de l architecture et du patrimoine; initiator of the Le Corbusier project. Athenes June 2006.