Do you know Maillols, the architect ? He left his mark on my neighborhood in Rennes. The Bourg-L’Evêque district, just west of the city center. His signature buildings stretch for less than a kilometer.

This neighborhood was a suburb of the ancient city of Rennes. A poor, unhealthy suburb. So when the city had to be rebuilt after the bombings of the Second World War, the district was the focus of a major urban planning operation.

Slums were razed, factories moved and rebuilt, in search of space, greenery and light in buildings that were intended to be modern, without hesitating to contrast with the old center with its narrow streets right next door.

The mayor at the time, Henri Fréville, put his trust in one man to design this district: George Maillols.

Here, he designed apartment blocks with astonishing geometries to serve their residents: the apartments had to be spacious and bright, with wide views over the urban landscape.

With these functional principles permanently in mind, he then imposed no standards on himself and was able to think outside the box. He climbed to new heights when space was at a premium, straddled roads when access had to be preserved, created staggered facades so that every balcony was unoverlooked, and designed transverse apartments to let light in everywhere.

Today, we admire his audacity, his ability to put new construction techniques at the service of his ideas. We can also admire his human touch, for while his geometric facades are photogenic, he didn’t create them to please himself, he imagined them so that the inhabitants would feel good in them. And you don’t just feel good in a well-designed, functional apartment, you also feel good in a space that you find beautiful, that appeals to you and that has an identity.

Each of his buildings is unique and has a different shape. On the scale of the neighborhood, Maillols did not seek the classic beauty of uniformity, and his buildings can be seen as incoherent, arranged here and there without thought. From another angle, however, we can also find these variations very natural, like plants of different sizes and shapes that turn differently towards the sun depending on the space they have available.

In these turbulent times, I find the principles and constraints that guided George Maillols and Henri Fréville particularly relevant: to offer as many people as possible beautiful, pleasant housing, seeking urban well-being through harmony between topography and architecture.

Of course, this harmony is subjective and finds its references in a very different era than today. But I have the feeling that this subjectivity is overshadowed by the very strong identity of the buildings. It’s an identity that marks the neighborhood, that marks the city, and the people who live in these buildings are often aware and proud of it.

We need these kinds of great markers for society. We need these bursts of audacity and creativity that tell us who we are. It’s not easy to open these doors: you need confidence in yourself, in others, in the future. And today’s anxious times are less conducive to this than those of the 30 glorious years. But at a time when we need to reinvent ourselves, I think it’s precisely the right time to free our thoughts and create new ideas.

See you soon.

Lucile

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