The Butte R o uge housing estate DOCOMOMO fil e Ill. 1 . Rue Alber t Thomas with the S ignal Tower ( first phase 1931 – 33 ) . Photo by Barbara Gutglas , May 2014 DoCoMoMo international file __________ ______________________________________________________ 1. IDENTIT Y OF THE BUILDING OR GROUP OF BUILDINGS Common name of the buildings : The Butte Rouge Current name : The Butte Rouge Garden City Street name and number : 287 – 355 avenue de la Division Leclerc (D986) , as well as the following streets: Eugène Varlin , Général Duval, Jean Allemane, Edouard Vaillant, Charles Longuet, Paul Lafargue, Benoît Malon, Eugene Pottier ( all leaders and fighters in the Paris C ommune) , Francis de Pressensé, Marie Bonnevial, Albert Thomas, Pierre Renaudel, Emile Durkheim, François Si miand, Lucien Herr, Robert Hertz, place Leon Blum, avenue des frères Montgolfier , avenue Saint Exupéry , etc. Municipality : Châtenay - Malabry P ost code : 92290 Country : France CURRENT OWNER N ame : Hauts - de - Bièvre Habitat , a cooperative social - housing company founded in 2018 that own s properties in Antony and Châtenay - Malabry. Previously, the Butte Rouge belonged to Hauts - de - Seine Habitat. Ad d ress : 8 avenue Léon Harmel , 92160 Antony T e l e phone : +33 ( 0 ) 805 02 54 28 1 LEGAL PROTECTION, IF ANY Type : Listed as “ Patrimoine du XXe ” (Heritage of the 20th century), which has since become “Notable Architecture” under legislation passed on 7 July 2016 . Date : 2008 ORGANI ZATION RESPONS I BLE FOR PROTECTION N a m e : D irection Régionale des Affaires Culturelles d’Ile - de - France (Regional Directorate of Cultural Affai r s in the Île - de - France) ; Unité départementale de l’architecture et du patrimoine des Hauts - de - Seine (Departmental Unit of Architecture and Heritage of the H auts - de - Seine , aka UDAP 92 ) A d dress : 45 – 49 r ue Le Peletier , 75009 Paris; Domaine National de Saint Cloud , 92210 Saint Cloud T e l e phone : +33 1 56 06 50 00; +33 1 46 02 03 96 2. HISTOR Y OF THE SITE The commission : A historic model of humanistic social urbanism , the garden city at Châtenay - Malabry was built thanks to the impetus of Henri Sellier, director of the Office Publique des Habitations à Bon Marché de la Seine (the Public Office for Affordable Housing of the Seine Département , or Seine OPHBM) , wh o was also a member of France’s short - lived Popular Front government . The Butte Rouge is one of 15 or so garden cities built by the Seine OPHBM all around the outskirts of Paris to house working population s . Inspir ed by the garden - city theories promot ed by Ebenezer Howard in early - 20th - century England , the Seine OPHBM’s initiatives were a response to the shortage and insalubrit y of affordable housing in the Paris region . The land at Châtenay - Malabry was acquired , along with that at Le Plessis - Robinson , as of 1918, and earmarked in 1919 for the “Greater Paris Garden Cities” project that resulted from a design competition for the extension of the French capital. A t Ch â tenay - Malabry, the garden city was designed and built by a team of architects — Joseph Bassompierre, Paul de Rutté and André Arfvidson , later replaced by Paul Sirvin — and a landscape architect , André Riousse. C onstruction was undertaken in seven phases from 1931 to 1965. Ill. 2 r ue du Général Duval ( second phase, 1935 – 39 ) Ill. 3 p lace François Simiand ( first phase, 1933 – 35 ) Photo Barbara Gutglas , May 2014 Photo Barbara Gutglas , May 2014 The Butte Rouge comprises 3 , 900 dwellings set in 70 hectares of green open space . 2 Ill. 4. Google Earth aerial view , screenshot, June 2020 Ill. 5. C hronological map of construction, Ap ril 2019 The first and second phases, built before World War II between 1931 and 1940, comprise 1 , 543 dwellings ( source IAURIF) essentially contained in buildings of traditional height — three or four storeys — lined up along streets or around squares. The following phases, built in the post - war era between 1949 and 1960, comp rise 2 , 300 dwellings in buildings that include a pilotis - mounted bar known as the h alf m oon ( a rchitect Pierre Sirvin) and the Signal Tower . A utonomous buildings were later constructed along closes located at the woodland’s edge. 3 Ill. 6. Rue R obert Hertz as photographed from the tower by Barbara Gutglas in May 2014 Ill. 7. Allotments in the garden city. Photo Barbara Gutglas , May 2014 As with many garden cities , the urban layout was carefully composed . Two perpendicular axes are superimposed on winding streets which follow the hilly contours of the site , whose steep descent is due to a former water course, the Châtenay brook . This topography guided the planning of the estate . Rectangular p ublic squares and taller buildings punctuate the layout, bringing a certain monumentality to the ensemble, which features numerous collective facilities : crèches, primary schools , a secondary school , gym s , sport s grounds and shops, as well as dispensa ry, a library , a cin e ma, a n auditorium and a swimming pool, whose water w as heated by the Garcher network . Today, some of these 4 facilities have been lost, while others have been converted to different uses, such as the pool , which became a theatre in 1982 . The accommodation provided is 100% social housing of the “ PLAI ” type (i.e. for tenants with extremely limi ted resources), with a majority of small dwellings. André Riousse, the landscape architect, was particularly attentive in his treatment of the site . Not only did h e manage to preserve countless existing trees (150 , of which 16 are remarkable specimens ) , but his handling of the alleys and embankments harmoni z e s perfectly with the buildings, while the squares and the park are generally contrived to give onto the wider landscape . Low dry - stone walls and small pools embellish the ensemble, which includes allotments and pedestrian pathways that bring a bucolic aspect and contribute to the social life of the neighbourhood . The Butte Rouge is a precursor to many of the concerns of today’s “ Grand Paris ” project with its careful insertion into the site, its abu ndant vegetation, its collecting of rainwater and its recycling of household rubbish, which was burned in an incinerator to heat the pool . Architects : Joseph Bassompierre, Paul de Rutté, Paul Sirvin, André Arfvidson Other members of the design team : André Riousse , landscape architect CHRONOLOG Y Competition date : The plan for the Butte Rouge garden city came out of the 1919 competition held by the City of Paris and the Prefecture of the Seine for the planning, embellishment and extension of the French capital . The architects Rutté, Sirvin, Payret - Dortail and Bassompierre submitted a project for a garden city of over 100,000 inhabitants on two plots of land acquired by the Seine OPHBM in Le Plessis - Robinson and Ch â tenay - Malabry , and won first prize f or it in Section IV of the competition entitled “ Dans les jardins ” (“In the gardens”). New impetus was given to the project by the Loucheur Law, passed by parliament in 1928, allowing Henri Sellier to commission the architects. Date of the commission : 1925 Design phase : 1925 – 30 Dates of realization : seven phases : 1931 – 33, 1935 – 39, 1948 – 50, 1950 – 52, 1955, 1958 – 60, 1963 – 65 Inauguration : Ju ne 1938 , by Jean Longuet, Ma yor of Châte n a y - Malabry CURRENT STATE OF THE ENSEMBLE Us e : Housing and related facilities State of the buildings : Good, but in need of restoration due to lack of upkeep. The last time the façades were restored was in 1995. Some of the buildings are beset by problems of damp and noise transmission which need to be rectified . Summary of restorat ion and other work undertaken, with the dates : The garden city was first refurbished in 1984 – 95 , the work being commissioned by the then owner, Hauts - de - Seine Habitat , and carried out by the architectural firm of Louis Sirvin. The primary concerns were to improve insulation and bring the ensemble up to modern standard s : all the original windows were replaced with new double - glazed models, all of the buildings were insulated on the exterior, new bathrooms were installed or old on es renewed ( improved plumbing and wiring, replacement of sanitary equipment ), gas and electric installations were brought up to standard , and the staircases, hallways and entrance doors were all refurbished . The work was largely financed by a PALULOS grant (Prime à l’amélioration des logements à usage locative, which translates as “allowance for the improvement of rental dwellings”) . 5 I n 2015, Hauts - de - Seine Habitat, at that time still the owner of the site , organized a competition for the urban renewal of the Butte Rouge. Three teams were invited to submit proposals, and the main bodies responsible — the OPH, the SEM 92 ( which became Citallios) and the municipality — involved . The three teams — led by GRAAL , S imon Goddard and Claire Schorter — spent over a year working on projects that sought historic and urban continuity with the garden city as first conceived in 1919, but which also took into account the dynamics of the 2010 Greater Paris project . The teams sought to continue the story of the Butte Rouge, to which inhabitants feel a strong attach ment . The team formed by Claire Schorter/ J . Osty /Mageo was proclaimed the winner, but the municipality took no further action . I n January 2018 , ownership of Ch â tenay - Malabry ’s social housing , including the Butte Rouge, was transferred to the coop e rative Bièvre Habitat, uniting the social - housing stock of Antony and Châtenay - Malabry . A “ protocole de préfiguration” (preliminary memorandum) was signed with the Ag ence nationale de la rénov ation urbaine (National Office for Urban Renovation) on 3 January 2017 .