Demolition, in the suburbs of Lyon, of one of the oldest HLM "bars"

"Construction unit number 1" (UC1) was inaugurated in 1959. It was designed by architects who were disciples of Le Corbusier.

Of the 330 apartments, there remains an enormous concrete skeleton, which a giant mechanical shovel is working to dismember. In Bron, in the inner suburbs of Lyon, one of the oldest "bars" in France disappears after having seen thousands of lives pass by. On the side of the 46-meter high building, the ongoing demolition has revealed a mosaic of pastel colors: sections of walls and their tapestries, vestiges of old interiors.

Blocks of stone, held in the air by the interlacing of the cables which reinforced the slabs at each level, complete this strange picture. "Construction unit number 1" (UC1) was inaugurated in 1959 within a "large complex" of 2,600 housing units, the largest of six built at the time across baby-boom France - Angers, Boulogne-Billancourt, Bron, Le Havre, Pantin and Saint-Étienne.

Designed by architects who were disciples of Le Corbusier, the UC1 embodies modern comfort at the time. Its polychrome facade has not yet been painted gray, the ring road does not yet pass in front of it and the surroundings are rural. Six decades later, the district has become a "priority" for city policy and the demolition of the "liner", landlocked in a road junction, is the symbol of an urban renewal project.

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— Damien Mon Jan 11 00:23:39 +0000 2016

Construction started in July 2020

The mechanical shovel, whose arm equipped with a gripper extends to the 14th and last floor, has already brought down a mountain of rubble by "nibbling" the building 230 meters long, 12 wide, by one side . Delicate work: misters diffuse water vapor to absorb dust and a crane deploys a huge carpet to limit projections. "We could go faster but at the cost of greater nuisance for the neighborhood", underlines Marjorie Dumont, manager of the operation at Lyon Métropole Habitat (LMH), social landlord owner of the premises.

The construction site began in July 2020, when the last of the 800 inhabitants left, and should be completed next summer, once the foundations have been backfilled. Its 10.5 million euro budget is two-thirds funded by Anru, the rest by LMH and the Metropolis of Lyon. Before tackling the 40,000 tons of concrete, the inhabitants had to be rehoused. Four years were needed. Half of the households chose to stay in Bron. It was then necessary to remove asbestos. Then "deconstruct" the apartments in a "selective" way, by dismantling showers and sinks, shelves and radiators, doors and cupboards, partitions and windows: 1,200 tons of materials (wood, glass, earthenware, metals) to be recovered.

Going upstairs today, open to the four winds, we still find traces of past lives: photos on a wall, tags on the elevator, the garbage chute, a switch... In his new home , a nostalgic of the UC1 demanded to find a switch exactly in the same place. Stripped bare, these spaces that have been inhabited for decades seem to be briefly reborn when the sunlight passes through them, morning and evening. But it's time for demolition. A classic blast was impossible due to the proximity of the ring road. Hence the use of the mechanical shovel, which will have finished its task in the spring.

The operation does not necessarily sound the death knell of the model, especially since the demand for social housing is strong on the Rhône, we underline at LMH. "We cannot brush it aside by saying that everything must be demolished. For many, UC1 was a way of getting closer to the city, thanks to low rents", considers Paul-Antoine Lacombe , who ran the local agency of the lessor during the relocations. The UC7 already disappeared in the 2000s. But of the 2,600 initial apartments of the eight bars built in Bron, 1,750 are still occupied. "Our desire is to renovate them because they remain socially useful," he says.