Au delà de la démolition
Le soin de l’architecture

 R CALZADO
2023, ECOLE DES PONTS PARIS TECH

Paris Habitat and ATER are the two main social landlords in Paris and Rome, with a stock of 125000 housing units in the first one (Paris Habitat 2021) and 48 000 the second one (Puccini, 2016) Both social landlords have been in charge for more than a hundred years of the development and maintenance of a large and varied social housing stock. This stock is typologically varied, including building types that go from low-rise developments to large-scale utopic grands ensembles (Ibid). At a time when the UN has acknowledged a worldwide crisis in affordable housing (U.N. 78th Sess. 2023), the primary hurdle for social landlords is to match the escalating societal demand for housing. Besides creating new social housing, social landlords must also ensure the durability of their housing estates. This thesis explores the factors that influence the actions of social landlords to enlarge or reduce the lifespan of a housing estate. To do so, the thesis examines the interplay between external factors that may influence the decision-making over one housing estate, such as market value, political goals or public opinion, while analysing the technical and spatial characteristics of the place itself, and the control of such characteristics by the social landlord. The central thesis of this study suggests that the physical characteristics of housing estates influence the decision-making process of social landlords regarding whether to increase or reduce the lifespan of a housing estate itself. The study will also test the relation between long-term maintenance activities, the role of guardians, and the increase of technical knowledge on the specificities of each housing estate. This project delves into the practice of housing transformation as well as the practice of housing demolition and how is it avoided. It explores the role of two different social landlords in the transformation of two different housing estates in France and Italy, as a mediator between political goals, technical knowledge and social companionship. Finally, this thesis seeks to contribute to the reduced but fast-growing literature on the maintenance and transformation of housing estates.


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