Among all the figures of architectural innovation in the second half of the 20th century, Pierre Lajus is one whose practice has taught me about the appeal of the architectural profession. As I try to reconstruct the foundation on which my conception and practice of architecture was built, I find a mix of places, objects and publications. The modern houses of Pierre Lajus, published in mass-market interior design magazines such as Arts ménagers, are undoubtedly among them.
These bright houses, open to the landscape, embodied for our generation the idea of American life. Not the ideal of America exported through war, but the ideal that Americans kept for themselves. This domestic ideal took the form of a living room opening onto a nearby garden, a space for the car and open kitchens. Simple yet generous, these homes were a pleasure to live in. This open typology broke with the petty-bourgeois interiors that had prevailed until then, and their cheap translation into standardized social housing. The simplicity of these houses gave the impression that it was possible to do more with less. It was possible to go bigger and more complex, while continuing to work with simple, inexpensive elements. Beyond the question of the home's image, this possibility was also of social interest. Pierre Lajus's “American-style” open standard housing resonated with the self-build experiments that had taken off after the Second World War. They were seen as a continuation and intensification of the liberation of access to and design of housing.
I met Pierre much later, in 2005, at a conference at arc en rêve. We immediately recognized each other, as if we'd followed the same path and drawn the same conclusions from the same situations. This meeting confirmed some of my intuitions about what had motivated him to innovate in prefabricated and modular architecture. In his youth, Pierre had been a scout and camping enthusiast. His first building experience was with a light craft: a kayak. Everything he went on to build the “Girolle” houses, and above all his own house—was prefigured in this first tightly-fitted construction, with very fine joints, ash strips, brass joints and stainless steel screws. It was no longer a do-it-yourself project, but precision work, a tight-fitting construction.
The camping paradigm isn't just about its taste for constructive detail and clever assembly; it also takes into account the knowledge of the camper who, by choosing the site, ensures that his tent won't be flooded, threatened or otherwise. A camper is someone with a strong sense of context. Originally, Pierre Lajus wanted to be a forestry engineer. If he turned to architecture, it was because he didn't pass the competition. His production, and in particular the place he gives to wood, is the consequence of these three elements combined: scouting, kayaking and the desire to be a forestry engineer. Pierre Lajus is one of those rare architects who have shown a genuine experimental disposition, and for whom this attempt to reform custom has produced tangible results. Girolles houses can be counted by the hundreds. There are over a thousand of them in existence. Restoring Pierre Lajus' work to its rightful place in the history of architectural experimentation is of the utmost importance today. In the 20th century, experimentation was often encouraged, both for reasons of basic necessity, such as after the Second World War, and for more symbolic reasons, such as to project the image of an innovative society.
The 1970s saw the transition from industrial prefabrication to open industrialization and the typological experimentation it gave rise to. Efforts to move away from large, homogeneous housing estates towards grouped individual housing were part of this movement. The State and collective structures took part in this desire for change by stimulating one initiative or another. With the benefit of hindsight, we can say that the main flaws that these reforms were intended to correct have remained unchanged. There's still just as much low-quality suburban housing, to which have been added neo-art deco developments of poor execution, modelled on the fantastical tastes of investors rather than the real needs of residents.
Pierre Lajus and the Réalisations Expérimentales program
Pierre is one of those who succeeded in producing quality and quantity while following an experimental path. Between 1978 and 1983, he took part in the Réalisations Expérimentales adventure, a government-backed social housing initiative under the auspices of the Plan Construction. The experiment, which focused on the concept of open industrialization, included a whole section on wood construction. This was also the time when attempts were made to combine construction and design, with architects such as Christian Gimonet in central France and Jean-Pierre Watel in the north, Lucien Kroll in Belgium, Roland Schweitzer in Paris and Pierre Lajus in Bordeaux. Later, they tried to team up with contractors. What we can say today is that, by choosing research and experimentation, these architects may have flourished as designers, but they didn't make a fortune. Over time, it becomes increasingly clear that this generation of innovators was not recognized for their efforts.
They served as a token to keep the subsidy machine running, but the incentive to innovate from those who supported them was just a speech, which they quickly replaced with another. Innovation needs continuity and, above all, perseverance in the effort made to move a sector forward. This has not been the case. We have brandished the advances of the moment without seeking to inscribe them in a future and in a global evolution of practices. At best, this is a sign of incapacity, and at worst, dishonesty. It's the same attitude that today consists of brandishing the virtuous character of timber construction to pursue real estate speculation with buildings that nobody will need in 20 years' time.
To return to Pierre Lajus, one of the areas of experimentation for this generation of architects was computers, which were in their infancy at the time. Some of them invested to equip themselves without breaking the bank. Many companies took advantage of these architects' work without giving them back what they owed them. Christian Gimonet's work, which was used by Olivetti, was not properly recognized. The same goes for Lucien Kroll. Pierre Lajus is one of a constellation of architects who pioneered computer-aided design, and who don't even get credit for it. Today, making the most of their archives is of crucial importance. Whether or not an archive is digitized can make a big difference, not least in how this work will go down in history, and above all in how it will be used by the next generation of architects.
Historical parallels: the good and bad uses of wood
This is a highly topical issue, and not just for historiographical reasons. We're living through a period in which innovation is expected to play a central role, particularly around the transition to a low-carbon society. Wood is presented as a kind of miracle solution to the construction industry's main shortcomings. In so doing, the structure of the problem, i.e. the speculative nature of the housing production machine in our societies, is royally ignored. Wood can be much more than a bargaining chip for property developers. It can be a key to the political emancipation of local communities. It can become a pledge to enable people to take part in the configuration of their living and working space. We can imagine new forms of housing modularity based on the technical characteristics of wood. Wood could help us move collectively towards less regulated and more affordable forms of housing.
But to do this, we need to keep in mind what was done by previous generations. Understanding how the innovators of thirty years ago succeeded or failed to achieve their goals could prove essential to the success of what we are committed to. It wouldn't be a matter of replaying “a new beginning” for the umpteenth time, but rather of picking up where our predecessors left off, in order to take the experiment even further. Prefabrication as Pierre Lajus conceived it is perfectly compatible with work on modular architectural typologies. Unlike industrial prefabrication, whose aim is to produce a standardized habitat, open prefabrication uses standardized elements to create tailor-made solutions. Pierre Lajus, like Schweitzer, Gimonet and Watel, saw timber-frame construction as an opportunity to rationalize construction and cut costs. They were also attacking the monopoly of the concrete industry. The reason it didn't work out was that the next step—which would have been the do-it-yourself home—was never taken. A project management team that accompanied residents through the self-build process would have produced interesting results.
We therefore need to think about the synthesis between the innovation of the 80s and today's demand for political emancipation through housing. We could reactivate some of the tools that Pierre Lajus and his peers developed in the '80s, and put them to work for new communities of inhabitants who want to take their destiny into their own hands, rather than submit to the inflexibility of standard housing. That's what this architecture is all about today. It's about considering what he designed to house his own family as a model that can be extended and generalized. Indeed, while the openness of the system was necessarily limited in the case of these wall-houses by marketing imperatives, in the case of his own house, modularity operated to a degree that has rarely been observed. Internal mobility has been a structuring principle of his domestic architecture. It's based on the premise that the space occupied by members of the household changes according to their needs. When a house doesn't evolve, its inhabitants usually end up leaving it. Pierre's homes are different in that they are based on an occupancy pattern that is less fixed and less rooted in a single configuration. As elsewhere, they have bedrooms, but these are adjustable. The rooms in the house can be temporarily occupied and easily converted. The bedroom is probably less a place of definitive assignment than an adjustable convenience, which can be exchanged for another more suitable room. So, each time a child left, the rooms were reallocated. All you had to do was change the configuration, add or remove a partition. The house changed with each stage in the family's evolution.
Is it possible to imagine social housing that offers this kind of flexibility? An adjustable wooden habitat that would allow families to grow and houses to adapt to generational changes in households? In conclusion, it could be said that his life has been, and in some ways still is, one of experimentation. There are no anchors, no certainties. Rather like a camper, he practices a light architecture. The economy and frugality of his creations are entirely linked to his life choices and accidents. The fire in his own home in 1976, which was also his workplace, influenced his approach to the act of building. Buildings must first serve a purpose; they only last as long as they do. This reasoning runs counter to the patrimonial logic that is still the official doctrine when it comes to home ownership. People invest in real estate to build wealth, instead of building a house that meets their needs. From the outset, Pierre was one of those who placed more importance on the use value of housing than on its exchange value. In a way, he was a practitioner of this approach, someone who applied it all his life, without turning it into an ideological posture.
Interview and editing by Christophe Catsaros.