Suchergebnisse

Taking its point of departure from Mariana Mazzucato's The Entrepreneurial State (2014), this article examines the French state as an innovator in the realm of green housing. Drawing upon field research into the design and reception of eco-neighbourhoods, the author explores the French state's experiments in 'green culture', asking what 'improving daily life', a stated objective of the ÉcoQuartier programme, means to planners and residents? Do ÉcoQuartier inhabitants become more environmentally conscious in their domestic practices? There are numerous parallels with France's post-war experiments in mass housing that prompt us to ask questions about the French state's experimental method. This article argues that the innovation of the eco-neighbourhood reveals that the state's belief in spatial determinism remains strong and that the ÉcoQuartier initiative indicates that some, but not all, of the important lessons from the mass housing experiments of the 1950s and 60s have been learned.

This article draws upon archival sources, architectural trade publications and contemporary social science to trace the design and reception of the 'cell', a functionalist, rational apartment that was the building block of apartment complexes that sprung up all over France during the 1950s and 1960s. I argue that French Modernist architects, shaped by both professional and socio‐political concerns, believed their streamlined interiors to be key to building a classless society and restoring French greatness and thus rejected the dwelling preference and expertise of French homemakers when designing their homes. Nevertheless, Frenchwomen tried to ignore architectural dictates when it came to homemaking, and ultimately, in a changed political climate, their preferences convinced the national housing ministry to redefine its norms and standards for apartments.

After World War II, France embarked on a project of modernization, which included the development of the modern mass home. At Home in Postwar France examines key groups of actors - state officials, architects, sociologists and tastemakers - arguing that modernizers looked to the home as a site for social engineering and nation-building; designers and advocates of the modern home contributed to the democratization of French society; and the French home of the Trente Glorieuses, as it was built and inhabited, was a hybrid product of architects', planners', and residents' understandings of moder