Bergerac veils - apartments, Bergerac, France

Architectural Review, The, April, 1995 by Alan Windsor

This building edges far more towards the PoMo than those we are used to publishing. But, for all the wilful decoration, it does have virtues: it helps integrate student life with that of the city, and its decorative screen gives each flat a sense of particular identity.

Bernard Saillol's most recent important work is an apartment block of 33 self-contained units for students, which also houses the Treasury Department of Bergerac and an apartment for the Treasurer. It was designed for the SAHLM de la Dordogne. A Societe Anonyme d'Habitations a Loyer Modere is a housing association for building social housing for rent or for sale. Very much more important and active than their British equivalents, the SAHLM in France concentrate on new building rather than on renovation, and receive most of their finance from the Caisse des Depots et Consignations (CDC), an autonomous state agency which acts as a public trustee, drawing its funds mainly from savings banks, and also from lawyers, social security and provident associations. It can make loans of up to 95 per cent of the net cost of rental housing developments, at low, subsidised rates of interest. The CDC has the right to examine the running and management of any HLM requesting a loan. Bernard Saillol has previously worked for the SAHLM de la Dordogne, having built a bizarre housing complex of 40 dwellings for that organisation at Montignac, 1986-87, each unit resembling the base of a fluted column.(1)

Several categories of people have a priority in gaining access to renting accommodation in an HLM; each applicant for a tenancy has to provide evidence of his or her previous domestic situation, previous income, and so on; guarantees have to be furnished of future means of support. The Maison des Jeunes described here is occupied by students at one or another of the various colleges in Bergerac, by apprentices to various trades, by single mothers, young couples and others.

Bernard Saillol, a local architect born in Belves in 1944, has worked for the most part in his native region, although he confesses with wry amusement that he has never been invited to build a second time in any of the 15 towns and villages within a radius of 20 kilometres of Bergerac where his work is to be seen. This is not because any of his clients are necessarily dissatisfied with the buildings they inhabit or work in; it is because in almost every case his style, in a deeply conservative area architecturally, has been the subject of controversy among the general public and in the local press on completion. Saillol works alone without assistance in his office, usually at night, and yet has achieved some success in international competitions: an honourable mention for his design for the Maison de la Culture du Japon in Paris, and a jury mention for his submission for the Hotel du Conseil General des Bouches du Rhone a Marseille (both in 1990).

The Bergerac apartment block is the largest and one of the most successful examples of this architect's characteristically quirky and humorous approach to form, even if, like his other buildings (a primary school at Lalinde, 1989, for example) this is combined with a simplicity and economy of constructional technique and planning that does not in the least sacrifice practical function to the achievement of visual symbolism.

Using the most orthodox, well-tried constructional methods, he has realised a building with a light-hearted and fantastic presence in the rather humdrum town of Bergerac.

The apartment block is set on a flat, wedge-shaped parcel of land adjacent to an area of open flat ground which borders the route de Perigueux immediately to the east of the town centre, and which has no buildings of any distinction nearby. The parcel of land is being further developed by the SAHLM with blocks of flats of no particular interest by other architects. The building is essentially a reinforced concrete structure, a long rectangle 58 m x 11 m in plan, supported on slender, cylindrical concrete pilotis, beneath which are spaces for car parking.

It is comprised of two unequal four-storey blocks, one 33 m long, the other 21 m long, separated by a 5 metre wide gap. Both sides are terminated by end pavilions just under 16 m long. The left-hand block has a four-bay section some 17 m long, set back 1.50, and the right-hand one has a single bay measuring 4.3 m, similarly set back from the principal line of the facade.

In the centre of the 5 m gap are placed the lift tower, a free-standing element, and an exposed spiral staircase leading to a landing at each level. These provide the principal means of access, and are reached by a short flight of steps from the ground. At the back of the lift tower is a two-storey projection, 5 m wide, with a terrace on its roof, which houses a cafeteria.

An external gallery access to all floors, linked by other, straight staircases, runs across the principal facade, which faces east. The walkways on the galleries are prefabricated concrete slabs of a familiar standard industrial type, and the spiral staircase is also an off-the-peg product.