In 1894, just as the Art Nouveau was reaching France, ferro-concrete was used for the first time in a structure of some modest architectural pretension by J.-E.-A. de Baudot[[396]] (1836-1915) for a school in the Rue de Sévigné in Paris. This is overshadowed in interest, however, by the church he began to build in 1897. Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre at 2 Place des Abbesses in Paris has very little connexion with the Art Nouveau except for its drastic novelty. On the contrary, de Baudot employed for his structural skeleton very much simplified Gothic forms. Actually, it is incorrect to call the material used here béton armé; it is more properly ciment armé since there is no coarse aggregate as in concrete. Like his master Viollet-le-Duc’s projects, Saint-Jean is curious rather than impressive and not at all to be compared in intrinsic interest with Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia. Worth noting, however, is the use of faience mosaic to decorate the concrete structural members, something de Baudot had already tried out on his earlier school. The authorities were dubious of the strength of de Baudot’s structure, as well they might have been considering the iron-like delicacy of the membering, and a hiatus of several years held up the construction after 1899, the church being completed only in 1902-4. As has been mentioned already, the contractor was Contamin working with Soubaux, his partner of the period.
Before Saint-Jean-de-Montmartre was finally finished in 1904, Perret had already demonstrated the architectural possibilities of the new material rather more effectively in the block of flats that he built in 1902-3 at 25 bis Rue Franklin in Paris. Despite the echo of the Art Nouveau already noted in the foliage patterns of faience mosaic filling the wall-panels on the exterior, most of the interest of the building resides in its structure and its planning. Like that of Anatole de Baudot’s church, the structure is visibly a discrete framework, but made up entirely of vertical and horizontal elements with no curved members of either Gothic or Art Nouveau inspiration. However, the concrete is nowhere exposed but always covered with glazed tile sheathing. Within the wall-panels the windows are crisply outlined by plain projecting bands of tile; this provides an early instance of that encadrement, or framing, on which Perret came to insist in all his work after the mid twenties.
The skeletal structure of 25 bis Rue Franklin allowed great freedom in planning (Figure [36]). Around a small court, sunk into the front of the building, the principal living areas of each flat all open into one another, somewhat as in Wright’s Hickox house of 1900 but with less spatial unification (Figure [31]); the result is closer to Horta’s treatment of the main floor of his Aubecq house of 1900 in Brussels (Figure [34]).
The next year Perret built another block of flats at 83 Avenue Niel in Paris with an internal skeleton not of concrete but of metal, and façades of stone treated somewhat like those of his Art Nouveau flats of the previous year in the Avenue Wagram (see Chapter 17). He returned, however, at once to the use of ferro-concrete and rarely deserted it again.
The Garage Ponthieu, which was built in 1905-6 in the Rue de Ponthieu in Paris, is a much more striking example of the possibilities of the new material than the earlier blocks of flats; moreover, the concrete is here exposed (Plate [139A]). Inside, galleries carried along both sides of the L-shaped space provide a second level for parking motor cars and the whole interior is almost as light and open as if it were built of metal, thus recalling a little de Baudot’s church. The façade, likewise, is as skeletal as if executed with a metal frame. But Perret’s determination, somewhat comparable to Sullivan’s in the Wainwright Building in St Louis of fifteen years before, to organize the expression of a new type of construction along basically Classical lines is as evident as the maximal fenestration. The thin slab which projects at the top provides a sort of cornice and the range of small windows underneath it a sort of frieze, while the arrangement of the elements of the façade below is very formal indeed. The rose-window-like glazing of the big central panel is somewhat rudimentary and rather less Classical in feeling than the rest, but the essentials of Perret’s concrete aesthetic are all adumbrated here as they were not in the more tentative block of flats in the Rue Franklin.
In the solid, marble-sheathed façade of the Théâtre des Champs Élysées in the Avenue Montaigne in Paris, Perret’s largest and most conspicuous early work, his classicizing intentions are even more evident, but the expression of concrete-skeleton structure is much less complete; these intentions are underlined, moreover, by the large stylized reliefs by Antoine Bourdelle that provide the only external decoration. Originally, in late 1910, the commission for this theatre was given to Van de Velde. He at once proposed that it should be built of ferro-concrete with the Perret firm as contractors. During the course of the following year Perret proposed various changes in the plan to make more practical its construction with a concrete skeleton. When he later offered an alternative design for the façade this was preferred by Van de Velde because it seemed then so expressive of the underlying structure, as it hardly does to posterity. By September Van de Velde made a final report as consulting architect and withdrew completely. Needless to say, there has been controversy ever since as to the degree of Perret’s responsibility for this major monument of twentieth-century Paris; as built, however, there can be little question that it is very largely of his design. How different a theatre by Van de Velde would have been is at least suggested by the one that he erected in 1914 for the Werkbund Exhibition in Cologne (see Chapter [20]).
Figure 36. Auguste Perret: Paris, block of flats, 25 bis Rue Franklin, 1902-3, plan
The foyer of the Théâtre des Champs Élysées expresses the possibilities of ferro-concrete in a more architectural way than do the interiors of the earlier block of flats and the garage. The actual structural members of the skeleton are visible in the free-standing columns, as are also the beams that they support; the walls are very evidently only thin panels between the piers. A few simple mouldings are used to assimilate the new expression to the conventions of academic design—too few to satisfy contemporaries, though too many for later taste.
There is less clarity of expression in the great auditorium because of the profusion of murals contributed by various Symbolists and Neo-Impressionists—Maurice Denis and K.-X. Roussel most notably—and by the over-all gilding of the principal structural members, which are also elaborated by semi-Classical detailing. Even so, the fact that the dome is carried on the four pairs of tall slender columns is very evident, and the swinging curves of the successive balconies give early evidence of the ease with which ferro-concrete lends itself to bold cantilevering.