The Labyrinth aspect as a design element in La Grande Borne

1. Introduction

? La Grande Borne is a housing estate designed by the French architect Emile Aillaud in the 1970s. According to Aillaud (Aillaud E., 1972), the project was designed to create a sense of community and territorial identity amongst a homogeneous population, where art and utility could coexist in order to provide happiness and serenity to the inhabitants, allowing them to dream and grow. The project by its time was known for its innovative design, compared to other housing projects back then (1960-1970s), at least in terms of designed shapes and colors, reflecting the architect’s dream and concept of creating a space with children at the heart. ?The design features a series of interconnected staircases and walkways that form a labyrinthine layout. This paper focuses on the the labyrinth section out of all the other seven districts of the project, elaborating on the labyrinth aspect as a design element, and its impact on the inhabitants; their daily life and their behaviour.

Aside from evaluating the project in terms of positive or negative, we would regard it as rather different. As such, we addressed the labyrinth’s design impact at the time the project was executed, as well as in recent status after modifying the estate to interconnect more with the neighborhood. However, the labyrinth design form still falls into the same dilemma of effects; on the one hand freeing the people to wander/live within a labyrinth, and on the other, trapping them into it. This will lead us to question in the first place if the design served the intended goal of the architect, and secondly, question how the executed design impacted the inhabitants. ?

2. The labyrinth in La Grande Borne

? La Grande Borne, designed by Emile Aillaud, is a housing estate known for its labyrinthine design, which was intended to create a strong sense of community and territorial identity among residents. The complex is composed of over 4,000 units, arranged in a series of interconnected courtyards and buildings designed to be self-contained, with their own shops, schools, and other services. The layout of the complex is meant to encourage residents to interact with one another and foster a sense of community. As such, the goal of the design was to create a socially sustainable environment for the residents.

The city (housing estate) is made up of seven different districts; three of them made up of buildings with curved facades cladded in shaded glass (named in French as: Le Labyrinth, Le Méridien, and La Peupleraie), three districts made up of straight buildings covered with strongly coloured porcelain tiles (named in french as: Les Radars, Les Tiroirs and the La Ville-Haute), and the La Ville-Basse.

As a case study, of all the seven districts, only the labyrinth section will be elaborated; being the first idea to emerge to the architect’s mind when designing la Grande Borne, where he pictured a place that won't follow the straight lines of most housing developments. The estate was a complex maze of streets and open areas interspersed with "neighborhoods" of colorful, low-rise apartment complexes. Aillaud stated he was obsessed with creating a home where art and utility could coexist, but more importantly, a place where the young occupants could dream and grow (Niang, 2015).

?3. Concept behind the labyrinth

? According to Aillaud, when looking at La Grande Borne, one sees that there are a series of two buildings forming the shape of two big brothers’ spaghettis that he’d call noodles. However, the noodles shapes there has a different form elsewhere, being the labyrinth. Aillaud believed that the security of existence can only be acquired in a labyrinth formula which, incidentally, is the formula he had created for himself in his neighbourhood of the 6th district, which is exactly the city with all of these streets where he has lived for 15 years.

?“There are streets that are confused and intermingled in a way I know that we can live but that I?do?not?discern "Christine street" from the "palatine street" or the "dauphine street". You can only start to recognize it because you have this little impression that you can simply re-imagine this way of living and you can sense them when you walk there. The way I created the labyrinth isn’t simply the pleasure of the form or forming extravagant curved shapes, it is to create possibilities of conflicts of wanderings (Aillaud, 1972).

4. Design structure and concept implementation

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The layout of La Grande Borne is based on a series of identical concrete structures, known as "towers," which are connected by walkways and staircases at various levels. The towers are arranged in a grid pattern, with each tower consisting of several floors of apartments. The walkways and staircases that connect the towers are placed in a seemingly random pattern, creating a labyrinthine network of paths that residents can use to move through the development.

All of the curved buildings in this district are of the same radius and size, thus forming a labyrinth layout with concave and convex shapes alternatively. However, their different juxtaposition forms long, winding walls that, depending on how close or far they are, as such creating vanishing paths, mental twists, and curved views with endless sight. Inside the narrow branches of the Labyrinth, the ground is asphalt; with the rolling ribbon of the car service marked only with bollards, and winding among trees, benches with tables and playground fences, forming all together an attractive point for a collective life.?

Places stand out differently in this fabric, with eight themes assorted to their corresponding names –translated from French- and briefed as follows:

The Astrolabe, is a circular paved plaza with a black marble obelisk centered in the middle, casting a moving shadow all throughout the day. The idea of time is shown on the houses by their light and dark glass paste facades.

The Egg, is Egg-shaped and surrounded by trees. A basin-shaped wall surrounds a stretch of sand; a very big person. Enceladus or Gull liver. there is only sand, and all that can be seen is the head on which one stands and into whose eyes one leans. On these limbs: the hands, the knee, and the foot. like on rocks. children climb. slide and jump.

The Meniscus, defined as a wading pool that takes up most of the space in a useless basin of paved ground. The space was created to give the aspect of where to sit based on chance.

The Scale, weighted down like water. In the middle of a place, a layer of cobblestones. rises in the shape of nipples, like the "chop."

The Ellipse, bleachers around the place forming an aspect of a theater, holding a spectacle - or composing it. The big spaces inside the Labyrinth's curves are made to look like natural meadows, with grass like the water in the gulfs. approaches the houses. Playgrounds make up situations in these places.

The Marigot and the sand pond, both have stretches of sand that are bordered by a quay and have rocks and concrete hippos in them. We can cross these areas by stepping on different kinds of bollards, which are made of concrete or metal while going to school, and the market, and returning. The toboggan is usually a bother for kids: they have to climb twelve steps to get to a slide with the same length. And the child starts all over again, just like a squirrel whose race in a cage is tricked by killing it in a wheel. They "serve" here and must quickly get down from a rock, tower, or hill. Pyramids break up the space, and there's always a tree. This thing is often paired with a cedar; the two of us make a pair. a conversation and a friendship. By the object growing on its own, time becomes a dimension. Each game stretches your mind in a different way.

The mountain, it is a long hill made up of the building terraces. One of the peaks has crenelated trenches that can be stormed, and the other peaks have terraces with a postern that can be stretched.

The villages, Small groups of low cells. Around a plot, children's villages would be built in the shape of a pyramid, with benches to make them feel more like cities. ?

?“The way I created the project, especially for children or for how they play, it is exactly as I imagined them they would do there even in the place where I thought it would be. A lot of attention, desire and realism have to be invented not just on a plane as an architect but by a model of desire that holds of such area of space at specific timing like in the evening or in the day etc. I have imagined that it will have the fact that you feel a very homogeneous population. It is not embarrassing that what you create does not have a preference on making judgments of all categories knowing that the charm of it is not fake. I do not perceive that the way of living of different social classes is sufficiently homogenous to allow a place to group them or define them. In my opinion, I see in many mass plans in higher end projects and more expensive houses layouts that doesn’t have any singularity of aspects. The whole variables of a neighborhood of an old town is something that was created from the balance of things and have ended up being homogenous. Where, I believe that happiness in living is more likely in the unanimity of place than in sectors that would create hostilities.” (Aillaud, 1972)

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5. The impact of the initial design on the inhabitants

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When discussing the impacts, we could study both positive and negative impacts. In addition, we could question whether the initial design served the intended goal of inclusiveness and integration, or conversely led to isolation. Finally, we could question as well how the executed design served the inhabitants.

The labyrinth layout makes it difficult for people to walk straight from one part of the development to another, and instead encourages them to explore different paths and meet other residents along the way. This design concept is sometimes described as porous, because it allows people to move in and out of different spaces and socialize with their neighbors, thus creating a collective life; promoting a sense of community and social interaction, where everything is/can be done (art, shops, playgrounds, picnics, benches with tables, etc.).

However, this same reason that might seem positive to offer people the ease of freely wander within the labyrinth form, might be considered as negative by others. A lot of criticisms have affected architect Emile Aillaud’s project despite the novelty and nobility of his intentions, where La Grande Borne didn’t gain its reputation for architectural success, rather from its social impact, being regarded in the past few years as a crime scene or/and being regarded as a home for criminals.

Many interpretations analyses and readings tended to associate the concrete labyrinth to crime and criminals, where it is thought that “the serpentine maze gave plenty of cover to mount ambushes against officers with pump-action shotguns and gasoline bombs” (The Associated Press, 2015). One can’t deny that in terms of ease of access, the labyrinth design generally empowers local residents (with greater familiarity with the place) over outsiders (mainly the French police) especially in a place where the French state is weak (The Associated Press, 2015). However, regardless of the specificity of La Grande Borne, studies have always linked labyrinths to positive outcomes, with labyrinth walking being a form of active meditation that can help people break free of thoughts and behaviors as it awakens the potential for contemplation, reflection, and transformation (Lizier et al, 2018). And thus, the labyrinth’s design in the first place could/should not be blamed for the bad implementation/outcomes later.

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6. The impact of the modified design on the inhabitants

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The negative impact of the labyrinth associated with crime might perhaps also be affected in a way or another by the lack of services offered to the inhabitants. For example, the placement of parking lots on the peripheries of the estate and far away from the residential units created a mobility issue for car users. Pedestrians who only used busses/trams faced mobility issues as well, having to wander all throughout the labyrinth’s layout to cross the estate.

Cumulative stresses on inhabitants were faced with neglect from respective authorities all over the past years. However, following several riots (riots in 2005), the authorities introduced new lanes in 2011 to connect the estate to its neighborhood. “Figure 5” shows how the estate that was previously isolated within the triangular network of highways, is now linked by the highway composed of 6 lanes passing through it[3] .

However, despite such modifications and improvements in mobility inside the housing estate, the linking of la Grande Borne to crime and violent events persisted (police attack in 2016, Essonne’s fatal shooting in 2017), in addition to the association of Grande Borne’s resident Amedy Coulibaly with Charlie Hebdo’s attack in 2015, inhabitants especially young aged black residents have been directly linked to violence and crime.

Thus, once again, linking the labyrinth design to matters of isolation/integration, and positive/negative impacts, needs to be further studied and elaborated based on extensive and reliable qualitative and quantitative analysis.

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7. Conclusion

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Probably one of the most controversial dilemmas in design is what came first, the design or policy, and what changes what? The labyrinth design at the Grande Borne raises this same controversy, blaming the discrepancies on the architect at one time and the politics at another. Similarly, the same controversy raises when discussing intentions and implications, where utopian concepts turn into real mistakes.

The architect was asked to make sure that people could live there, where he could only intervene in the internal organization of the space through the structures he put in place. He was given the freedom of design –as to shapes, colors, built base, without him being able to decide on the means of connection, the types and locations of shops, workplaces, police stations, etc. (Aillaud E., 1972). Thus, the freedom of transforming his design into reality was only assigned to the administrative officials and/or national policies.

?“There is substantive work being done, but what happened on Thursday is proof that the problems at La Grande Borne have not been resolved” states Clade Carrillo, Alliance-police union (France info, 2017).

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On another note; Most probably the different terms denoting objects “the astrolabe, the Meniscus, the balance” weren’t selected haphazardly by the architect Emile Aillaud who might have genuinely had idealistic intensions when he created this complex estate where young people would dream and grow. Also, when mentioning the term “Big Brothers’ spaghetti”, Aillaud might have referred to the Big Brother’s symbolism of dictatorial power gazing into people’s lives (Orwell’s 1949 novel). As such, one might assume that he wanted to urge residents to rethink messages and eventually decide for themselves while wandering in the labyrinth.

The high rates of youth unemployment, drug addiction/dealing, and crime, overweighed the improvements (new cultural center, new gymnasium, linked tram, etc.) done later by the government and municipality, questioning the role of politics, national policies and urban planning in increasing or decreasing the social and security impact. And therefore, the main question that arises after every inconvenience remains, where does the fine line between urban planning and politics end, or maybe we should ask, where does is start?

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Bibliography

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[1] Estignard M. L., Philippe E. (2011),” City of La Grande Borne”, Ile-de-France Region - General inventory of cultural heritage (2023) Source: https://inventaire.iledefrance.fr/dossier/cite-la-grande-borne/aee3e0d1-2732-49a3-91d0-3aec7ca8ccb2

[2] Aillaud, E. et al (1972), “La Grande Borne à GRIGNY Ville d'Emile Aillaud, Hachette (1972)” p.50-52

[3] Information based on coordinating with the students in Group 3 who studied the Roads at La Grande Borne