From the 1960s, the Belgian architect Lucien Kroll imagined another architecture giving the inhabitants the power to imagine, decide and build.
Lucien Kroll was called to Alençon in 1978 to coordinate the rehabilitation of the district of Perseigne: a ZUP of 2,000 dwellings built according to the same plans throughout the district, with buildings in bars and towers and streets that always intersect in right angles. The apartments are all similar to the centimetre. The buildings are uniformly grey. The trees, of one essence, strictly aligned along the streets.
Lucien Kroll’s choice is to break with the standardization of existing buildings, rather than demolish them.
By responding to the needs and desires of each inhabitant, a new urban landscape emerges that reflects the diversity of cultures that the ZUP had denied.
The Kennedy Avenue building was built to show that this project was feasible. The achievements initiated by Lucien Kroll were numerous in the neighborhood: the Open College Louise Michel was the most emblematic, the small wood of Perseigne is another as well as the buttes at the entrance of the avenue Kennedy. Mention should also be made of the Lamartine Street handicraft area. most of these achievements were destroyed during urban renewal programmes in the early 2000s.
The Kennedy Avenue building escaped and is now a heritage worth revealing. It is one of the rare witnesses of the work of Lucien Kroll in France, renowned throughout the world but unknown locally.
We invite you to discover the amenities proposed by Lucien Kroll that remain in the neighborhood.
Link to a recent exhibition in Caen.