Backyard gardens in the sky! Naughty post-apocalyptic buildings that harken back to ‘environmental brutality’ by René Guilhoustett | Build

WWhen French architect Renée Guilhoustet died in 2023, residents of Le Lligat, a social housing complex she completed in 1982, put up a large handmade sign saying: “Renée Mercy.” Architects are often accused of designing impersonal bungalows that they would never deign to inhabit, but when Guilhoustett died at the age of 93, she had been living in her Liégat duplex in the Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine for more than 40 years.

Outside her living room window, several stories high, there was a large cherry tree and an abundance of greenery. Gilhostet’s free-plan apartment buildings are characterized by their bustling informality, and always feature cascading balconies and walkways covered with a foot of soil, so residents can plant and enjoy United Nations Jardine Drethere, Back garden.

Over time, agriculture has enhanced Le Liégat’s outlines, as with its other residential schemes, softening and subverting its concrete structure in a post-apocalyptic, nature-appropriating way that plays so well on Instagram. However, it originally emerged from a social view that people should have access to green spaces, anticipating today’s preoccupation with more environmentally friendly architecture, capable of mitigating the effects of rising temperatures. In 2003, about 15,000 people died in France due to a heat wave. Planting provides natural shade and cooling.

Guilhoustett can be described as an “environmental brutalist,” but her work over the decades, after graduating in architecture from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1961, is not easily pigeonholed. She specializes in social housing and suburban urban planning outside the borders of the United States peripheral – Less fortunate and less attractive is Paris, where few tourists venture. They were often combined with public amenities such as shops and cafés, and their massive residential structures were formally and spatially complex, like modern small towns. Designed to be adaptable over time as residents’ living arrangements changed, the individual apartments were highly proportioned, with space, light and air flowing in all directions.

Le Corbusier noted that the house is “a machine for living in.” So Which modernist architecture has suffered over the decades. Although her work is undoubtedly modernist, Gelhostett took the opposite position: that homes should be shaped by their occupants, and architecture should provide a model of expansion and enrichment, rather than soul-numbing constriction. She once wrote: “The idea of ​​social housing as an addition to small, functional rooms should not be socially approved. Almost no one living in these conditions would choose to do so. We are not so pretentious as to propose ideal housing. We only wish to create possibilities for choice.”

Architect and academic Nicola Barrington-Leach, editor of a huge forthcoming book on Guelhostet, explains its appeal: “Her work invites us to imagine new ways of living together as an ecosystem, to reframe our relationship with nature, with the city, with each other and with ourselves. Houses are not machines to live in – but gentle, individual human spaces.”

In a career dedicated to building over 2,000 social homes, Gilhostet has provided an imaginative response to the community. big teams, Post-war industrial and consolidated housing developments that dominate the fringes of most French cities. Commissioned directly by left-wing municipalities, it was able to work freely and experimentally in an open brief but still had to adhere to a limited budget. “She used these constraints to develop her vision and ideas,” Barrington-Leach says. “And I think that’s the message I get from it — that you can actually do a lot with a little.”

In conjunction with the book, which will be the first English-language exploration of Gilhostet’s work, Barrington-Leach has organized an exhibition entitled A Thousand and One Ways to Live at the London Architectural Association (AA), where she teaches. The exhibition takes its title from the words of Rima Abdel Malik, former French Minister of Culture, who observed that Guilhoustette’s architecture offers “a thousand and one ways to inhabit our world.”

Part of the AA’s grand Georgian interior has been skilfully transformed into a 1:1 scale installation for Le Liégat’s apartment. “The goal was to bring one of her apartments to AA, to show her spaces rather than just her ideas,” Barrington-Leach says. The walls are represented by thick sheets of white paper suspended by cable ties of steel wires strung across the exhibition space setting the ceiling height level of the apartment. This work aims to convey proportions and relationships, and the effect is closely sculpted abstract and practical, a poetry infused with pragmatism.

Besides photographs and drawings, the different housing types are also represented by smaller scale models in poured concrete and card – bizarre, sharp-edged and waywardly random. However, the appearance of complexity belies the underlying structural simplicity and clarity, based on a hexagonal structural grid and lightweight sections that can be easily rearranged. Gelhostett once described the role of the architect as “the craftsman of a difficult material: space.”

Born in Oran, Algeria, in 1929, the daughter of the deputy director of the Sada Oran newspaper, Gilhostet grew up in the European quarter of the coastal city before moving to Paris to attend university. She turned to architecture after studying philosophy at the Sorbonne, a move that led her to build rather than theorize, as confirmed by her political convictions. She was active in the Communist Youth Movement, and during periodic clashes with far-right groups, she once had her nose broken by Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of the country’s National Front party.

Between 1963 and 1985, Guilhoustet oversaw the radical transformation of the city of Ivry-sur-Seine, on the southeastern edge of Paris, while working on projects in other suburban areas, including La Maladriere in Aubervilliers, to the north. With an abundance of civic spaces – a library, a cultural centre, a home for the elderly and a children’s centre, along with shops, gardens and artists’ studios – La Maladrerie was designed in 10 phases, took 10 years to build and is its largest project, with 850 residences.

But by the 1990s, the political context had changed, as France’s central government became increasingly hostile to large-scale housing projects. Business began to dry up and in 1999 she closed her business for good.

For decades, Guilhoustette remained on the fringes of architectural history, her reputation somewhat overshadowed by that of Jean Renaudé, whom she met in her mid-twenties. They lived together for about 15 years, had two daughters, and collaborated on many projects. But her pioneering contribution is now being recognized, albeit belatedly. In 2022, a year before her death, she was awarded the Royal Academy of Architecture Prize. “Its achievements reach far beyond what is produced as social or affordable housing anywhere today,” said Farshid Mousavi, chair of the judging panel.

Most importantly, her design process was collaborative, rather than top-down. Concepts such as open-plan living and garden terraces were discussed with residents through large-scale physical models. Although some residents initially struggled with non-conformity and found it difficult to imagine themselves in unconventional architecture and ill-defined spaces, the homes she built are still loved and sought after.

Most of the housing in Gilhostet is still council-owned, and despite decades of state neglect and some misguided renovations, resident groups continue to fight to maintain their work, and have succeeded in listing several buildings. “It has proven that we can explore alternative ways of living and create a framework for our cities that allows for adaptation and reuse,” Barrington-Leach says. “Its legacy, like its architecture, grows as a living archive: evolving with every resident and every season.”

René Guilhoustett: A Thousand Ways to Live is at the Architectural Association, London, until 21 March