| Title |
The Architectural Competition ‘Programme Architecture Nouvelle(PAN)’ and a New Direction in Collective Housing Architecture in France in the 1970s |
| Keywords |
Collective Housing ; Architectural Competition ; PAN ; Urban Architecture ; French Contemporary Architecture |
| Abstract |
This paper concentrates on the architectural competition series “Programme Architecture Nouvelle(PAN)” organized by the Plan Construction of the French government in the 1970s. Instead of considering this institutional episode as a simple result of accumulation of preceeding architectural projects and debates, we focus on its generative role in the emergence of a new direction in collective housing architecture in the first part of the 1970s. An extensive analysis of the development of the competition from the first session in 1972 to the seventh in 1975 shows that the movement occurred in the general tendency of the projects submitted, from the “proliferating architecture” to an “urban architecture”, was closely related to general circumstances of the time which were the reduction of size of construction operation and the abandonment of the heavy prefabrication method since early 1970s. But it is important to note that, if the programming by the competition organizers provided a basis for this change, the continuing research on the part of participating architects and intense debates in architectural journals developed from the results of different competitions including the PAN played an essential role in this changing direction. |