Grammars of Urban Space: A. Perret’s Project for Place de l’Hôtel de Ville in Le Havre

Abstract

This study proposes to recognize that ‘idea of city’ at the foundation of the A. Perret’s project for Le Havre. This experience seems to be defined as a paradigm in the relationship between building typology, urban morphology and physical geography: the aggregation of residential collective buildings defines those monumental places through which the city represents itself in front of those great forms of physical geography in which the project recognizes the identity of the locus. This foundational relationship seems however to be achieved through the establishment of an appropriate grammar of urban form, through wich the ‘internal’ space of the city defines a significant relation with the ‘external’ spaces of the nature and with the great forms of physical geography. In the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville this grammar manifests itself in the most eloquent expression. In this place the city, thanks to the extraordinary expansion of the open space, defines its relation with the cliff, which in this way is introjected in the urban form. On the other hand, the definition of those spaces more contracts, such as the courts of the residential collective building, seems to affirm the value of the circumscribed space. The research of A. Perret is therefore oriented to define the correct syntactic relationships between spaces of different signification: the analytical definition of the parts that make up the edge of the void and the typological variation of these builings makes intelligible the relations between the circumscribed spaces of residences and the dilated size of public places. In this way the urban space assumes the urbanity and the condition of finiteness of the historical city, but defines a significant relationship with the outdoor spaces of nature, thus acquiring the ‘dimension’ of the contemporary city.