Renée Gailhoustet placed her Ensemble Marat within the urban complex she designed with Jean Renaudie for Ivry-sur-Seine. Its design was begun in 1971 but this housing project would be delivered later in two phases, the first in December 1985 and the second in June 1986. Here, venturing away from the “Corbusian typology” Gailhoustet proposed, according to a sectional approach to space, a pyramidal structure organized into an orthogonal system. The façades in raw concrete are staggered, in the form of bridges or overhangs. “In the program for Marat, we had to balance very contradictory spatial requirements: automobile access on different levels, pedestrian pathways and variations in level, in order to weave these networks into the traditional city road network; the constraints of urban life weighing heavily on the site meant that these housing units required protection in the form of terraces, patios and super-elevations…” Marat follows the modernist tradition of the open plan for its open areas (parking garages, supermarkets, etc.) and the one of the supporting veil for the housing units, “with two differences however: these veils are not levelled off horizontally; their inclined cut creates spaces which are always oriented upward. The succession of these inclined planes and their orientation make up most of the landscape that is visible from the towers above. These veils are not opaque; openings enable the lateral development of the housing space, and complete the large bays defined by the gaps in the framework. They interrupt each other, thereby leaving space for the patio. Light penetrating into the very heart of this interior volume makes it possible to design units with unexpectedly deep layouts: 20 meters, and sometimes more” (R. Gailhoustet).
