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- Title
Le Lycée Camille-Sée (Paris, 1934) ou la modernité célébrée.
- Authors
Le Cœur, Marc
- Abstract
As a means to explain the motives behind the ebullient, positive reception of the Parisian Lycée Camille Sée for Girls from its opening in the fall of 1934, Marc Le Coeur describes and traces its extensive national press coverage from June to January 1935. One of the most publicised French buildings between the wars, it was heralded as pedagogically innovative and technically modern, with its monolithic pink concrete facade, boiler room, fuel-oil kitchens, escalators, elevators for professors, vast bays and terraces, and below-ground interior court. Commentators unanimously commended its architect François Le Coeur (1872-1934) for his audacious ingenuity in designing a paragon of schools with simplicity and originality. In the realisation and elucidation of the project to the public, the concerted efforts of Francisque Vial, director of secondary education at the Ministry of Education, founding directress Evrard, and the architect himself all played significant roles. Vial launched the concept, encouraged and approved the novelty of the plans (on a site substantially smaller than norms allowed) and actively solicited press response, handled in part by the directress. The establishment was touted as a showcase for ministerial commitment to the renovation of secondary education and the inauguration of ambitious designs for other school projects in the capital. Le Coeur was inundated by the press and photographers even before the lycée was entirely completed, such pressures no doubt contributing to his sudden death in November, only two months after the inauguration. Stressing pedagogy above all, Vial made certain that qualified interlocutors were available as part of the press campaign. The results proved positive, the work perceived (even by the most conservative critics) as a prototype of urban high schools, a magnificent pedagogical tool, exposed to light and air, endowed with exceptional facilities and comforts, referenced to other functional "traditional modern" buildings such as factories or department stores. In 1937-1938 the building received a second consecration in playing an inspirational role for three new Parisian lycées, as discussed in L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hui (August 1938). The lycée then disappeared from public notice until the Late 1980s when it underwent unfortunate alterations (for example, aluminium replacements for metal framing, incidental painting to the facade, suppression of elevator and escalator, closing access to terraces). Nonetheless the school was inscribed in its entirety on the Supplementary Inventory of Historic Monuments in January 1995. As the author concludes, this recognition is due not so much to the building as it exists today, but as it was reported to be in its integrity by reporters in 1934, to which contemporary historians still refer.
- Subjects
PARIS (France); FRANCE; MODERN architecture; ARCHITECTS; FRENCH architecture; ARCHITECTURE; ARCHITECTURAL design; MODERN movement (Architecture); INTERNATIONAL style (Architecture)
- Publication
Docomomo Journal, 2005, p335
- ISSN
1380-3204
- Publication type
Article