Sauf aux Riverains: the riverine memorial of Georges-Henri Pingusson

► SEARCH for a course at the University of Kent: http://bit.ly/2snUQnv ► Research at Kent: http://bit.ly/2s0sZJp ► SUBSCRIBE for more Think Kent lectures: http://www.youtube.com/user/UniversityofKent?sub_confirmation=1 THINK KENT – INTERNATIONAL THINKERS | GLOBAL IMPACT Riverine has echoes in English of the sign you see on streets near to rivers in France: ‘sauf aux riverains’. This refers to the access given to locals to the narrow passageways leading down to the river, and seeks to bar ‘foreigners’ from getting too close to the water. In towns, most buildings like to keep a healthy distance between themselves and the flowing river, apart from those parts that have an intimate relationship with the water, such as landing stages and warehouses. Nonetheless, the general principle obtains, that urbanised rivers become embellished with raised embankments, raising houses and gardens well above the waterline, and out of harm’s way. We see this most clearly in those cities with well-developed riverside terraces, such as in Dresden with its Brühlsche Terrassen, in London with its Adelphi development of the late eighteenth century, and generally by the banks of the Seine in Paris, where the streets end abruptly in a precipitous canyon into which the river appears to be sunk, to be reached by narrow stone steps accessed through chinks in the closely packed bouquinistes lining either bank. At the extreme eastern end of the Ile de la Cité, behind the chevet of the cathedral of Notre Dame, you find a low concrete mass split in two places by narrow stairs. Descending, you pass between a pair of concrete ‘grindstones’ and arrive at a hard, concrete courtyard, hemmed in by bush-hammered walls. Above, the sky; while ahead, you see and hear the Seine rushing past, its waters virtually level with the pavement at your feet. This was the scene designed by the French architect Georges-Henri Pingusson (1894-1978), a late masterpiece completed in 1962. The external sunken courtyard leads to a labyrinth of cave-like spaces that tunnel beneath the tip of the island; the whole ensemble is the monument to the deported, the place of ‘collective memory’ for Paris to remember those of its citizens, largely Jews, who - during the German occupation in the Second World War – were rounded up and deported, eventually east to the extermination camps in the Reich.   Pingusson’s work is, to borrow the subtitle of the monograph on his oeuvre by Simon Texier, ‘la poétique pour doctrine’, and represents one of the great brooding and evocative spaces of modern architecture. A ‘non-building’ compared to the more orthodox output of his practice hitherto, it is accomplished by recourse to simple geometries and everyday materials, yet manages to evoke an almost mythical atmosphere, as if one were descending into Hades, stopping awhile at the lapping waters before Charon, the ferryman, carries us off. The spatial configuration and material presence remind us of other, uncanny, riverside ensembles, such as the Traitors’ Gate at the Tower of London, the skateboarders’ undercroft at the South Bank, or Harry Lime being given chase through the sewers of Vienna, before they empty into the Danube. The location behind Notre Dame lends the memorial a sacred aura, while its location upstream from the site of the 1961 massacre of peaceful demonstrators against the Algerian War, led by the Paris police chief (and later convicted war criminal) Maurice Papon, further intensifies this, the most haunting of memorials to the infamies of the twentieth century. ABOUT PROFESSOR GERALD ADLER Gerald Adler is Deputy Head of the Kent School of Architecture and Director of the Masters in Architecture and Urban Design. His main research interests lie in twentieth-century architectural history - British: Robert Maguire & Keith Murray, 2012, German: ‘The German Reform Theatre: Heinrich Tessenow and eurhythmic performance space at Dresden-Hellerau’, 2015 and ‘Energising the Building Edge: Siegfried Ebeling, Bauhaus bioconstructivist’, 2014, and French: ‘Sauf aux Riverains: the riverine memorial of Georges-Henri Pingusson’, 2017 (forthcoming). He jointly organised the AHRA (Architectural Humanities Research Association) 2012 Scale and Kent’s 2014 Riverine conferences, and co-edited the resultant books. ► Find out more about Professor Gerald Adler: http://bit.ly/2ss4VjP Find the University of Kent on social media: ► Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UniversityofKent ► Twitter: https://twitter.com/unikent ► Instagram: https://instagram.com/unikentlive/ ► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/university-of-kent