Marc Quentin, when the new wind blows

Marc Quentin will have had a fruitful work in Rochefort, where he was city architect from 1958 to 1979, just before Bruno Coussy. His name came up with the debate on the future of Saint-Charles hospital, around fifteen years ago, and not in glorious terms. While the seven-story blue bar with roof terrace was often called an “ugly wart,” the name of its designer Marc Quentin was tarnished. An injustice for this talented architect who brought to Rochefort, rather sad and gray at the time, a breath of modernity and a touch of lightness.

Born in 1921 in Amiens, this young man, from a bourgeois background, studied in Paris. In 1946, he graduated from the National School of Fine Arts and the Special School of Architecture. In the meantime, he met Yolande Gros, student and daughter of the lords of Mons and Belmont in Royan. It was by marrying her that Marc Quentin arrived in the seaside town. The couple will have two children: Didier, former deputy mayor of Royan, and Bruno.

A fine architect

A godsend for this young architect attracted by the reconstruction of the town razed in 1945. “He will rub shoulders with the town planners who have come to build urban thinking in Royan, where the field of architecture is boiling! », comments Frédéric Chasseboeuf, tour guide from the Rochefort heritage service. Small detail: the office of Marc Quentin, sensitive to creation and the avant-garde, admirer of Le Corbusier and Robert Mallet-Stevens, is located in the Prouvé house!

It’s not always easy to describe Quentin’s style, especially since it had periods, “perhaps depending on his different collaborators”, specifies Frédéric Chasseboeuf. We can still say that he was a man of his time and an architect of regional stature. In the “Royan Architectural Guide 1950” (1), the author Antoine-Marie Préaut writes: “He is described as a minimalist architect, following the principle of maximum economy of means, in line with the modernists of the moment. » To be effective, he works on the right proportions and details that make the work fine. An influence per touch, but it is there.

In addition to his signature in Royan where he created many of the most careful villas of the Reconstruction, he was also architect of the City of Rochefort from 1958, succeeding René Lavoine, son of Léon. “Initially, its offices were located in the premises located on either side of the Porte du Soleil, at the entrance to the arsenal. Then, the mayor at the time, Jean-Louis Frot, took them over for other municipal functions,” remembers his son, Bruno Quentin.

A wind from Royan

While the Lavoine father and son era, to whom we owe among other things the maternity ward of the former Saint-Charles hospital or the Zola school, brought Rochefort into modernity, with Marc Quentin, Rochefort moved into modernity. In the city of Colbert, he will be entrusted with major municipal projects. His paw? Royal elements echo the dreamy seaside life: roof terraces, cubic volumes, variable heights, stairwells and glass paving stones, stone on the side walls, colors and ceramics, attention to detail and decor.

To understand it, let’s look at the Pergaud, Anatole-France (1964-1968), Herriot, Saint-Exupéry schools, the Saint-Paul church, the bus station (since disappeared), the Saint-Charles hospital and its chapel (1972). ), the day hospital on rue Peltier. But also the municipal swimming pool (1970), the stands of the Henri-Robin rugby stadium and the 19 pavilions of the Neptune city.

Marc Quentin, who died in 1997, also signed the restoration of the Gold Cup covered in blue, the new layout of Place Colbert which so attracted Demy to film his “Demoiselles” in 1966, the structural work and the interior of the Corderie at the time of its rebirth from 1976.

When the hospital was inaugurated, Rochefort saw above all that it finally had a large and modern hospital.

This is why Marc Quentin and his work deserve consideration. “In 1972, when the hospital was inaugurated, the notion of heritage did not exist and Rochefort saw above all that, like the others, it finally had a large and modern hospital,” says Frédéric Chasseboeuf. Indeed, an object is celebrated when it is born, then it becomes old-fashioned or kitsch, before becoming the darling of vintage fans! Thus Saint-Charles narrowly avoided demolition to be rehabilitated today while respecting its brutalist style.

The portrait of Marc Quentin would not be complete if we forgot to say that the man was simple and affable, gentle but also passionate and of lively intellectual curiosity.

(1) Éditions Bonne Anse 2012.