The French architect, who once had her nose broken by Jean-Marie Le Pen, created apartment blocks with cascading terraces that seemed to have surrendered to nature. They are still loved by their residents
W
hen the French architect Renée Gailhoustet died in 2023, the residents of Le Liégat, a social housing block she completed in 1982, put up a large handmade sign saying: “Merci Renée.” Architects are often accused of designing impersonal rabbit hutches that they themselves would never deign to inhabit, but when Gailhoustet died at the age of 93, she had been living in her Liégat duplex in the Parisian suburb of Ivry-sur-Seine for more than 40 years.
Outside her living room window, several storeys up, was a large cherry tree and a profusion of greenery. Characterised by their riotous informality, Gailhoustet’s free-plan apartment blocks invariably featured cascading terraces and loggias covered with a foot of soil, so residents could cultivate and enjoy un jardin derrière, a back garden.
Over time, planting has enrobed the angular contours of Le Liégat, as it has her other housing schemes, softening and subverting its concrete armature in a kind of post-apocalyptic, nature-takes-over way that plays well on Instagram. Yet it originally sprung from the socially minded view that people should have access to green space, anticipating today’s preoccupation with a more eco architecture, capable of mitigating the effects of rising temperatures. In 2003, around 15,000 people died in France in a heatwave. Planting provides natural shade and cooling.
