Disappearance
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The architect, to whom we owe the Ministry of Economy and Finance in Paris and thousands of social housing units in the suburbs, died at the age of 95.
Typically, architects die before their buildings. However, some have the opposite experience and we can detect the obsolescence of constructions, the versatility of the needs of the time or even the longevity of the designers. Paul Chemetov is one of them. In 2014, he saw one of his housing buildings in Courcouronnes (Essonne) fall, only thirty years after it was built. Three years later, it was the Cara tower, a hostel for young workers, which disappeared from the landscape of Saint-Ouen (Seine-Saint-Denis). In the summer of 2022, the architect was still fighting to save constructions in Les Briques-Rouges in Vigneux (Essonne), threatened with ending up like the others on the altar of urban renewal.
“In the 20th century, we built much more than in past centuries: this heritage includes buildings that cannot be repaired, cannot be habitable and must be destroyed, conceded Chemetov to Humanity in 2019. Others, however, can be renovated.” And man believes that “architects must have a great awareness of time”. He more than anyone, who over the decades has signed numerous achievements – social housing by the thousands
