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Article: The rise of the grands ensembles: government, business, and housing in postwar France.
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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AS FOREIGN VISITORS APPROACH the outskirts of large French cities, they first gain sight of the grands ensembles, massive suburban apartment complexes built in the 1950s and 1960s. Scholars have long argued that the grands ensembles were the product of collaboration between engineers in government agencies and the private sector. (1) Few historians, however, have devoted adequate attention to the formative connections between these two groups, necessitating a fresh examination of the immediate postwar era, when the organizational framework for the grands ensembles first began to evolve. Analysis of state architectural competitions, held between 1943 and 1953, unmasks the ...