Lyon (AFP)
Lyon celebrates with pomp the 150 years of Tony Garnier, visionary architect, forerunner of modern urban planning, to which his hometown owes the stadium of Gerland, a hospital, a hall that bears his name today or collective housing.
Conferences, visits, several exhibitions, one of which, very rich, at the Archives municipale de Lyon until March 21 or that of Fort de Vaise from November 30, are dedicated to this architect who helped modernize Lyon at the beginning of the 20th century.
With the exception of the Town Hall of Boulogne-Billancourt, built in the 30s at the request of Mayor André Morizet, his achievements will remain Lyon.
Son of Canut, born on the slopes of the Croix Rousse August 13, 1869, Tony Garnier is considered the first architect to think of the city as a whole. Its main principles, like the idea of garden cities, have influenced contemporary urbanism.
"Tony Garnier did not hesitate to upset the city, to move Lyon, and Edouard Herriot wanted a modern city," noted his distant predecessor the mayor of Lyon Gérard Collomb during the visit of the exhibition of the Archives, aptly titled "The Mayor and the Architect".
None of Lyons' achievements by Tony Garnier is currently classified as an historic monument, except for part of the hospital Edouard Herriot. And some worry about the future of this heritage, poorly protected in their eyes.
"We strongly agree to include Tony Garnier's heritage in our reflections - we need to keep the signs of the past, use them, reuse them, but also that the city is evolving," Mr. Collomb said. proud of the renovation of the Grand Hotel-Dieu ... that Tony Garnier was planning to destroy.
- Utopias -
After studying at the École des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, the architect went to Paris, obtained several awards and tried six times the competition of the Grand Prix of Rome, finally obtained at the dawn of the twentieth century. He will remain four years at Villa Medici, until 1904.
Instead of studying the ancient art as it should, this great admirer of Zola refines in Rome his project of industrial city, "functionalist" city, based on a zoning system: residential area, administrative area, hospital zone , university area ...
This utopia, which will occupy it for years and forge its international reputation, comes alive in the exhibition of the Municipal Archives thanks to rare and remarkable plans, drawings and models.
Well-being of the inhabitants, light, hygiene, integration of nature in the city, leisure and services are at the heart of his city. Le Corbusier will approve twenty years later: "Where order reigns, well-being is born".
He was then entrusted with the design of slaughterhouses and livestock market in Lyon, inaugurated in 1928 and which remains the great hall, named after Tony Garnier, the hospital pavilion Grange Blanche (Édouard Herriot today), the stadium of Gerland or the City of the United States.
This project of "hygienist" workers' city was proposed in 1919 by the architect. More than 1,600 housing units will be built, but after profound changes imposed by the town hall ... and the economy. The district was inaugurated only in 1935.
Tony Garnier died on January 19, 1948, with no descendants, and almost no writings on his work.
© 2019 AFP