When André Morizet, the Socialist mayor of the Parisian suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt, came into office in 1919, the problems that awaited him were immense. France had only just begun to recover from World War I, and the area needed modernising. Roads were full of potholes, pavements were incomplete, rubbish collection was virtually non-existent and basic infrastructure – from water and sewerage to gas and electricity – was deficient everywhere. But according to Claude Colas, the head of Boulogne-Billancourt’s municipal archives, Morizet was an optimistic man, verging on the visionary. During the first years of his mandate, he updated the city, repairing roads, installing footways and electric street lighting and expanding public services. By 1925, he was ready to embark on a far more ambitious undertaking: a new town hall.
Morizet dreamed of becoming a kind of Haussmann for the suburbs. He looked longingly at the transformation that central Paris had undergone in the previous century and envisaged remaking his neighbourhood just as radically. The new town hall would become the physical embodiment of that ambition. Morizet understood that architecture was a potent tool for civic progress. Luckily for him, the area had already become a landing strip for artists, Modernists and important industrialists: the painters Marc Chagall and Juan Gris; architects Robert Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier; and car company founder Louis Renault all called Boulogne-Billancourt home. Yet to find the right architect for the project, he travelled further afield, to the industrial city of Lyon.
The architect and urbanist Tony Garnier had chosen to live and work in the east-central city, far from the intellectual and architectural circles of urban Paris. His built projects were mainly restricted to civic infrastructure, like La Mouche slaughterhouse (now a concert hall named in his honour). He was best known for his speculative theories of user-centric design – being among the first to believe that architecture and urbanism were inextricably linked and should ultimately serve the user’s quality of life – and distilled them in his 1918 manifesto, Une Cité Industrielle. It was that work that caught the attention of Morizet, who initially approached Garnier to join the jury that would decide the plan’s architect. But Garnier balked at the suggestion, and instead implored Morizet to simply award the project to him – which he dutifully did.
The civic monument Morizet envisaged for the new town hall was ambitious, and Garnier’s proposal was equally as radical. The space is organised into two distinct wings – one for administration, the other for ceremonies – with a spacious central atrium joining the two. At the time, tuberculosis was a major concern in France’s industrial centres, so the town hall had to be comfortable, hygienic and full of light. The 22-metre-high central atrium would encourage air flow and let in light from a massive glass skylight above. Both Morizet and Garnier wanted the space to embody the transparency of the municipal administration, ensuring public services were visible and accessible to all citizens. ‘In one glance you could see everything that you need,’ explains Claude Colas.
In documentation about the project, it is clear that Morizet had little concern with finish. There’s no record of him instructing Garnier to decorate anything in particular. Yet still, the architect managed to kit out the space with elements designed by some of the most important names in Modernism. A young Jean Prouvé installed the metal banisters that curl around the grand central staircase, as well as the service counters, movable partitions and signage that defined the building’s functional aesthetic. René Herbst designed the furnishings for the ceremonial salons and wedding hall. The lighting scheme was entrusted to André Salomon and his company Perfécla, whose Egyptian-inspired floor lamps illuminated the vast public spaces. And none other than Robert Mallet-Stevens – whose cache of homes on the eponymous Rue Mallet-Stevens made him one of the defining figures of French Modernism – designed the chairs for the administrative offices.
Yet despite the emphasis on practicality, certain features of the building defy Morizet’s edicts and Garnier’s functional logic. As a town hall, civil marriages are, naturally, an integral part of its remit, and the wedding salon is undoubtedly the building’s most spectacular feature. Stepping through the tall wooden doors, spouses-to-be are greeted by an airy, double-height space entirely lined in delicate, shimmering gold leaf — a luminous surface that seems to glow warmly from within. Black lacquered wainscoting anchors the room, the same finish found on the ceiling, which is decorated with an abstract hanging sculpture that swirls above visitors’ heads like fireworks bursting in the air. At the head of the room, the officiant sits behind a glossy burl-wood desk, while guests and witness perch on Herbst’s lozenge-shaped leather benches. ‘We don’t know why it’s golden,’ Colas admits. ‘There’s no record of a conversation between Morizet and Garnier. To his credit, Morizet didn’t want decoration anywhere, he wanted everything to be practical. It’s very sumptuous and we don’t know why.’
In many ways, the gilded wedding salon is an anomaly. Perhaps it didn’t quite fit with Morizet’s vision of civic modernity, which may be why he never mentioned it. Indeed, its glamorous Art Deco aesthetic seems almost hedonistic in light of the Modernist sobriety that dominates the building. Perhaps it marks an older sensibility, one that suggests that even the most rigorous Modernists occasionally – and thankfully – are capable of a bit of spectacle.
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