Ivry-sur-Seine

photography by OLIVIER AMSELLEM
text by DAVID LIAUDET

 

Just outside of Paris is IVRY-SUR-SEINE, one of the last Communist cities in France. This cluster of buildings was constructed in the 1970s by the French urbanist and architect Jean Renaudie and would remain an awe-inspiring project. The term Brutalist, which often attaches to Renaudie’s work, doesn’t do justice to the oasis of houses that resulted. Rem Koolhaas sent his students there to get inspired — not just about housing but also about humanism — by the geometrical angles and garden terraces brimming with greenery.

Between 1970 and 1975 Jean Renaudie (1925-81) created a low-income housing project in Ivry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris. Renaudie built the residences at a time when high-rise buildings were going up all over France. His design emerged from his humanistic examination of the needs of residents, many of them from the Ivory Coast; the architectural constraints;…