La semaine dernière, j’ai rencontré un journaliste du NYT à la Mairie pour lui parler de notre belle ville et du Lignon. L’article est paru le 29 septembre 2011.
VERNIER, Switzerland ? Alexa Magalhaes has no plans to move from the apartment building where she has lived for the last six years, and why should she? As one of the largest such buildings on earth, it provides for just about all her needs, she says.
?I love this building; it's a little village, you have everything here ? school, medical center, families with children,? said Ms. Magalhaes, a woman in her 30s who shares a bright three-and-a-half-room apartment with her young daughter.
Her sentiments are not universally shared.
?It's a monster,? said Jean Paul Laurent, 53, whose work for the local public utility occasionally brings him to the area. ?I'm from a small village, I live in a three-story house, I call that a human scale,? he said. Yet he admitted that tenants of Ms. Magalhaes's building, known as Le Lignon, after a river in nearby France, praised their apartments as large and bright, with splendid views and many conveniences.
The debate over Le Lignon is pertinent because the behemoth, with its 2,780 apartments, more than 10 million square feet of floor space and about 6,800 tenants, was thrown up four decades ago largely as a response to an acute housing shortage in the region around Geneva, including towns like Vernier. With immigrants streaming into the area every year, it faces a similar housing shortage today.
The question is whether to build another monster project like Le Lignon or to go the more accepted route these days of lower density housing.
If larger cities take pride in the height of their skyscrapers, Vernier, population 34,000, has long boasted about the length of Le Lignon, which at nearly seven-tenths of a mile, was for years thought to be the longest residential building anywhere. There were celebrations to mark the anniversary, and the canton of Geneva, the larger region in which Vernier lies, bestowed landmark status on the huge building.
In point of fact, Le Lignon is not the longest apartment building in the world. That distinction seems to go to one called Bymuren, which snakes 1.5 kilometers, or more than 4,800 feet, just west of Copenhagen; two other apartment buildings, in Vienna and Berlin, are roughly the same size as Le Lignon.
?It was the product of the period after the war, the baby boom, when the region needed to build because of demographic growth, and it had to be done fast,? said Justin McMahon, 34, an artist specializing in murals who grew up in Le Lignon, the son of English parents.
The idea, he said, was derived from the work of Le Corbusier, the Swiss-born French architect famed for his huge projects of affordable housing for the residents of crowded cities. Yet so controversial was the project that some thought it might be temporary housing.
?It was totally economical,? Mr. McMahon said. ?Some actually thought it would be destroyed 25 years later.?
Louis Payot was one of the team of architects who designed Le Lignon. Now 89, he has never lived there but has spent the past 50 years in a pleasant chalet he designed on the north shore of Lake Geneva. ?The idea was for a place in the country, with apartments extending through the building with views on both sides,? he said.
It was built on what had been a 70-acre farm, and the narrow, wall-like design allowed much of the greenery to be preserved. At the topping out ceremony, showgirls from a Geneva nightclub called Don Quichotte were bused out to dance. If he had the chance, he would build another. ?Absolutely,? he said. ?It is an epic poem.?
Le Lignon resembles nothing more than an immense wall, 12 to 14 stories high, snaking across a ridge above the Rhone. On one end stand two high-rise towers with additional apartments. Between the building and the river are a shopping center, Protestant and Catholic churches and a cluster of schools. Four huge underground garages provide parking for tenants.
Where Mr. Payot saw epic poetry, others saw bad prose. Almost from the start, upscale Genevans peered down their noses at the monster of Vernier. They called Le Lignon ?the rabbit hutch,? and in the 1990s its reputation sank as the number of immigrants living there soared, along with the youth unemployment and crime rates.
Unemployment remains high today and graffiti still abounds, but over the last decade the crime rate has dropped, thanks to increased police protection but also to programs that have put unemployed youths to work painting the garages or putting murals on outdoor wall space. Some young people organize afternoon tea dances for elderly tenants.
To be sure, architects, not only in Switzerland, continue to plan kilometer-sized buildings.
Thierry Apothéloz, 40, a social worker who has been mayor of Vernier for the last eight years, is not overly impressed with plans recently disclosed by Saudi Arabia to build a skyscraper for mixed residential and office use that would be roughly as tall, at one kilometer, or 3,280 feet, as Le Lignon is long.
?It's not the same; I prefer horizontal,? said Mr. Apothéloz, who for 12 years has shared an apartment with his wife in Le Lignon. ?Here you have the impression you are in shared space.?
Adrien Munch, 58, a computer technician who resides in a village near Le Lignon, will have neither. Two or three times a week he jogs along the Rhone past the farm buildings that remained standing on the property when their elephantine neighbor went up. The old farm house, with its clay tile roof and lovely wrought iron balcony, is now a music school; the barn is being restored to accommodate paying guests. An outbuilding is kept by a Portuguese family that has surrounded it with vegetable and flower gardens.
Mr. Munch, asked whether he could imagine living in Le Lignon, replied, with a wave of his hand toward the quaint farm buildings: ?Personally, no. I prefer the country.?
Le Lignon a l’honneur du New York Times !
La semaine dernière, j’ai rencontré un journaliste du NYT à la Mairie pour lui parler de notre belle ville et du Lignon. L’article est paru le 29 septembre 2011.
Le voici en anglais.
Housing Debate Unfolds in Shadow of a Living Wall
By JOHN TAGLIABUE
VERNIER, Switzerland ? Alexa Magalhaes has no plans to move from the apartment building where she has lived for the last six years, and why should she? As one of the largest such buildings on earth, it provides for just about all her needs, she says.
?I love this building; it's a little village, you have everything here ? school, medical center, families with children,? said Ms. Magalhaes, a woman in her 30s who shares a bright three-and-a-half-room apartment with her young daughter.
Her sentiments are not universally shared.
?It's a monster,? said Jean Paul Laurent, 53, whose work for the local public utility occasionally brings him to the area. ?I'm from a small village, I live in a three-story house, I call that a human scale,? he said. Yet he admitted that tenants of Ms. Magalhaes's building, known as Le Lignon, after a river in nearby France, praised their apartments as large and bright, with splendid views and many conveniences.
The debate over Le Lignon is pertinent because the behemoth, with its 2,780 apartments, more than 10 million square feet of floor space and about 6,800 tenants, was thrown up four decades ago largely as a response to an acute housing shortage in the region around Geneva, including towns like Vernier. With immigrants streaming into the area every year, it faces a similar housing shortage today.
The question is whether to build another monster project like Le Lignon or to go the more accepted route these days of lower density housing.
If larger cities take pride in the height of their skyscrapers, Vernier, population 34,000, has long boasted about the length of Le Lignon, which at nearly seven-tenths of a mile, was for years thought to be the longest residential building anywhere. There were celebrations to mark the anniversary, and the canton of Geneva, the larger region in which Vernier lies, bestowed landmark status on the huge building.
In point of fact, Le Lignon is not the longest apartment building in the world. That distinction seems to go to one called Bymuren, which snakes 1.5 kilometers, or more than 4,800 feet, just west of Copenhagen; two other apartment buildings, in Vienna and Berlin, are roughly the same size as Le Lignon.
?It was the product of the period after the war, the baby boom, when the region needed to build because of demographic growth, and it had to be done fast,? said Justin McMahon, 34, an artist specializing in murals who grew up in Le Lignon, the son of English parents.
The idea, he said, was derived from the work of Le Corbusier, the Swiss-born French architect famed for his huge projects of affordable housing for the residents of crowded cities. Yet so controversial was the project that some thought it might be temporary housing.
?It was totally economical,? Mr. McMahon said. ?Some actually thought it would be destroyed 25 years later.?
Louis Payot was one of the team of architects who designed Le Lignon. Now 89, he has never lived there but has spent the past 50 years in a pleasant chalet he designed on the north shore of Lake Geneva. ?The idea was for a place in the country, with apartments extending through the building with views on both sides,? he said.
It was built on what had been a 70-acre farm, and the narrow, wall-like design allowed much of the greenery to be preserved. At the topping out ceremony, showgirls from a Geneva nightclub called Don Quichotte were bused out to dance. If he had the chance, he would build another. ?Absolutely,? he said. ?It is an epic poem.?
Le Lignon resembles nothing more than an immense wall, 12 to 14 stories high, snaking across a ridge above the Rhone. On one end stand two high-rise towers with additional apartments. Between the building and the river are a shopping center, Protestant and Catholic churches and a cluster of schools. Four huge underground garages provide parking for tenants.
Where Mr. Payot saw epic poetry, others saw bad prose. Almost from the start, upscale Genevans peered down their noses at the monster of Vernier. They called Le Lignon ?the rabbit hutch,? and in the 1990s its reputation sank as the number of immigrants living there soared, along with the youth unemployment and crime rates.
Unemployment remains high today and graffiti still abounds, but over the last decade the crime rate has dropped, thanks to increased police protection but also to programs that have put unemployed youths to work painting the garages or putting murals on outdoor wall space. Some young people organize afternoon tea dances for elderly tenants.
To be sure, architects, not only in Switzerland, continue to plan kilometer-sized buildings.
Thierry Apothéloz, 40, a social worker who has been mayor of Vernier for the last eight years, is not overly impressed with plans recently disclosed by Saudi Arabia to build a skyscraper for mixed residential and office use that would be roughly as tall, at one kilometer, or 3,280 feet, as Le Lignon is long.
?It's not the same; I prefer horizontal,? said Mr. Apothéloz, who for 12 years has shared an apartment with his wife in Le Lignon. ?Here you have the impression you are in shared space.?
Adrien Munch, 58, a computer technician who resides in a village near Le Lignon, will have neither. Two or three times a week he jogs along the Rhone past the farm buildings that remained standing on the property when their elephantine neighbor went up. The old farm house, with its clay tile roof and lovely wrought iron balcony, is now a music school; the barn is being restored to accommodate paying guests. An outbuilding is kept by a Portuguese family that has surrounded it with vegetable and flower gardens.
Mr. Munch, asked whether he could imagine living in Le Lignon, replied, with a wave of his hand toward the quaint farm buildings: ?Personally, no. I prefer the country.?
Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/world/europe/geneva-area-housing-shortage-renews-debate-on-le-lignon-complex.html?_r=1&emc=eta1&pagewanted=print
Articles récents