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The history of architecture in Reunion Island from the XVIIth century to early XVIIIth century
Group A (CONTI Elina, CLAPIER Carole, MINATCHY Coraline, LEFORT Joaquim, PITY Sulivane)
Writing the history of Reunion Island’s architecture would be impossible to do without talking about history of Reunion Island. So first of all, let’s introduce us to the history of colonisation in Reunion Island.
Reunion has been discovered in the Vth century by the arabic seafarer but was colonized only in the XVIIth century by the French. In fact, Reunion Island was like a substitute : they came there because of the failure of Madagascar’s colonization but at this period Reunion Island was uninhabited. Indeed, it was a fully covered by the tropical forest, added to this, the coast of Reunion Island was not « welcoming ». But although, in June 1640 was the first taking and in 1665 the colonization began.
At the beginning, the settlers needed to adapt them-selves to the climate, indeed they mainly came from Europe so they weren’t comfortable with the tropical climate (cyclone) but Bourbon Island (previous name of Reunion Island) is totally different from the colonies they had at this moment and it gave them the opportunity to discover the territory and so that’s how they began agriculture of sugar cane but most of the most important settlers were farm coffee owners. Obviously, as it had agriculture, it had slavery. So Bourbon Island was like cut in half with on one side, the rich ones I mean the owners/settlers and on the other side the slave and there were situated in 3 cities : Sainte-Suzanne, Saint-Denis and Saint-Paul.
As there were two types of inhabitants, there were also two kinds of architecture.
Let’s talk about the architecture for the slaves !
Slaves came from Africa, Madagascar and India so of course, when they built their house they inspired them a lot of these countries. As they were the poor part of the population, they built their house with what they found so they only had plants like vacoa, bamboo, palms, latanier and calumet to build it. Unfortunately, that is not a strong or heavy material so they could not protect them from rain, hotness or coldness and there were not hygiene at all. These houses had rectangular based shapes and a triangle form which was also the roof. That were in general very little houses (around 2 meters high). Almost every slave lived in this king of house which is called « boucan » because to preserve the meat, they let the meat inside of the house with a fire, and then the smoke smoked the meat and Creoles call this meat « boucané » and it still goes on now.
About the other part of Reunion, the rich part, the settlers, they had usually big sturdy houses built with basalte. Indeed, as Bourbon Island is a volcanic island which means there’s lots of volcanic rocks as basalte, which is a good material for architecture because of its resistance. The settlers was all very rich so they could build big houses which was big constructions with also a rectangular based shape, with four walls, in general with two stairs : the ground floor to welcome the guest and the first stair for the rooms.
Now, some of these houses are still available as the Saint-Leu office, in fact, Saint-Leu was a place where the coffee crop was plentiful so they built building as the Saint-Leu office to stock the coffee.
Still talking about Saint-Leu, when its inhabitants became enough large, they wanted a church because they had to go to Saint-Paul to pray. They decided to build it on the 15th december 1977 et the work started in 1790. All the workers was indians, but they met some difficulties because of the sugar crisis in Saint-Leu but they ended a little chapel in 1791 all the same. The construction ended in 1858. During the same year, Monseigneur Maupoint dedicated the church to Sainte-Ruffine.
The architecture of the church is a mixt of european and Bourbon Island’s architecture with a European style et basalte. Indeed, the church has a cross form. To finance the church, all the inhabitants gave 52 bags of coffee in order to send it in France for them to pay the construction.
The church is now dedicated to Notre Dame de la Salette.
The history of architecture in reunion from XVIIIth century to early XXth
(GROUP B : Olivia, Coraline, Steven, Mathilde, Moreen)
A long time ago, as Mrs Levesque said, Reunion Island was just like a desert.
No one knew anything about its existence. But then conquistadors founds it and thought it could become a great place.
Let’s study Reunion’s architecture from the XVIIIth century to the early XXth.
■ At the beginning of the XVIIIth century, first settler of Reunion Island took place in 3 places: Saint-Paul, Saint-Denis and Sainte-Suzanne. These places are the first villages of the island and settler’s big houses are built around. These houses are made of tree-trunk and bough and are the first kind of ‘’real’’ houses of reunion island. It’s called ‘’paillottes’’. The vegetal material used is from vacoa, sugar cane but also vetiver, plants wich the culture is very developed in Reunion Island during this era.
All of them are based on a rectangular based shape and their roof, near of the ground, remind of Madagascar’s architecture where most of slaves are from. Indeed, there is a lot of slaves in Reunion island because of slavery, so that kind of habitation is very popular and common.
■ Then modernity began to arrive. Thus stone made houses appear, made with basalt, which is a hard cut stone reserved to rich people of the colony First of them are still built on a rectangular based shape and its main face presents a big door and two windows. This type of façade will often be copy in traditional creole architecture. The only architectural décor is a stone strip, which separates the ground floor and the first level. At the ground floor are located receptions rooms and at the first level are located bedrooms.
These houses are domestics metropolitans houses, witnessing of cultural transfers and influence of the island.
As an example, here is the ‘’ Adam de Villiers” house located in Saint Pierre. It was probably built between 1770 and 1780.
This edifice is an essential historic stake of creole architecture.
■ Then pavilion appeared. Indeed, in the XVIIIe century, coffee plantations develop and settlers build, on their lands, wood made houses. These are typical coffee planter houses.
In 1730, wood skeleton developed and by the way, fix creole architecture bases for more than two centuries. These houses have a rectangular base shape and have a fours parts roof, also called ‘’french roofing’’. This kind of habitation got its inspiration in Europeans models and more exactly from rural French houses of the XVIIIth century. This big ‘’cube’’ of wood often show a crude side.
Here is an example, it’s the historic museum ‘’de la villèle’’, located in Saint paul
■ In the XVIIIth century, the pavilion is the house’s most diffused model. A door and two windows, two doors, three doors, there are many possiblities about the façade of the house. All these possibilities form the basical model of traditional creole houses. For some, luxurious decorating is inside like walls adorned of Indian linen, coming from India. These are houses for rich settler or planters of the colony.
Often, the pavilion is surrounded by a big garden with many arboriginals plants.
■ After that, people began to add new structures to the typical model. In fact, varangues were added to houses. One the one hand it allows to have shadow ahead your house, and on the other hand it’s a windy it’s the windy place where family can chat or play cards …
They are first exposed to the north, against sun radiations and then it’s only since the XIXth century that it became a living room.
They have a specific mobile like rocking-chair made of wood, also called ‘’fauteuil creole”.
Varangues can be on the ground floor but also on the first level. This last one is basically closed with shutters, like they do in Pondicherry. What’s more, varangues are built with four column who are not directly put on the ground, but on a low wall.
■ Through years, houses continued their architectural development. In fact, people took inspiration from foreign cultures, especially from Europe and India.
As an example, here is the “GONNEAU-MONBRUN house’’, considered as “a castle” of the XVIIIth century, built in the 1770’s. It’s located in Saint Paul, where the most beautiful dwellings are based in the XVIIIth century.
The “GONNEAU-MONBRUN house” belonged to one of the wealthiest coffee and cotton planter during this period.
It has a great porch in stonework and is raised on terrace in order to avoid inundations. This house is built following a U shape. It also has varangues on the east and west side, which are supported by heavy columns, meaning of a luxurious dwelling. Some says that GONNEAU-MONBRUN may had employed Indian bricklayer because this house has a real Frenchy – Pondicherrian architecture. But, inside this dwelling, the decoration witness of a European influence, preferring symmetry and an inside distribution organised around a big living room.
■ At the end of the XVIIIth century, neoclassical intrude in European architecture, therefore, also in Reunion’s architecture.
The first habitation of this style was construct in the 1820’s in Saint Pierre, by a wealthy sugar planter. This style wants a house built at the centre of the plot and “posed” on a terrace. Its main façade is oriented to the south, in order to have shadow all year long. The ground floor is made of stonework whereas the upper floor is made of wood. It still have two varangues with columns made of bricks for the one of the ground floor and wood for the first floor.
Laterals facades are more simply-made, adorned with shingle.
If you don’t know what is shingle, it is pieces of wood that covers house’s walls. It allow rain to glides easily and is a good protection against wind. A wall cover of shingles can resist from everything between 100 and 150 years. These shingle are hand-made from Tamarins tree, because the cut has to be very meticulous.
■ After that from the XIXth century, pavilion got extended. In fact, the house is still located at the center of the plot of land, however, it now have two other pavilions at the upper floor. They are totally independent from the main house and is all covered of shingle. An adjoining house made of stone is built at the back of the house. It has a “roof terrace” to limit the risks of propagation if there was any fire in kitchens.
Because its main façade is very large, this house constitutes a big new. It point out the birth of a new architectural principle, here pushed to extreme: “the screen-façade”, kind of theatre décor. This type of houses witness of the evolution of Reunion Island’s architecture to urban houses, in the first half of the XIXth century.
Here’s the example with “DÉRAMOND house”, one the first house following this movement.
■ In the XIXth century, also qualified as Century of the industry, the Boulevard Doret is one of the two grand boulevards, with the one of the Providence. These two axes of communication form a big walk. Several resident of Saint-Denis built, along these boulevards, sophisticated villas surrounded by vast gardens and orchards.
■ Built between 1853 and 1861 by Jean-Baptiste Morange, a rich industrialist, the "château-Morange" is a testimony of houses near large cities. It is also a late example of neo-classic architecture in Reunion, esthetic current which continues during all the XIXth century.
Jean-Baptiste orange doubtless drew his inspiration from the neo-classic castles of his native campaign (Bordeaux). This impressive set consists of four main buildings. Interconnected, they are arranged around an inner courtyard. Three porticoes make the most majestic building. The originality of this dwelling is in its plan which is an open-air central courtyard.
■ It’s lined with fine small columns in cast iron, material that meets, in the XIXth century, a big success in Europe as in Reunion. If its general architecture stays in the neo-classic tradition, elements in cast iron give evidence of the broadcasting of the iron, material more and more used in the XIXth century.
In the XVIIIth century, houses from Réunion are rarely decorated outside. During the first years of the XIXth century, the main facades grow rich of a decoration of mouldings inspired by the neo-classic style. The traditional decoration of the Creole houses was born. Columns, pillars, diamonds, baguettes forming diverse motives, all these elements become gradually the familiar vocabulary of the from Réunion architecture. So, for lack of columns, whose realization asks for a bigger technical control, varangues is equipped with pillars capitals of which consist of simple moldings. In the angles of facades, we sometimes find pilasters, boards of which can be decorated with grooves.
■ The main contribution of the neo-classic decoration in Creole houses is the diamond.
It appears in Saint-Pierre for the first time on a house, around the 1810’s. The diamond meets in Reunion a big hit and becomes a recurring element of decoration of facades. This motive, very often realized by means of four wooden baguettes, allows to create at little cost a high-quality architectural decoration.
It became one of the motives idols of the craftsmen of the wood in Reunion.
If the neo-classic decoration ennobles Creole houses in the XIXth century, from 1860, the appearance on facades of cut decoration, in wooden or in metal, constitute the ultimate stage in the embellishment of the traditional houses.
The cut wooden decorations are very fashionable in the biggest cities. For example, the Foucque house located in Saint-Denis, is one of the first house using cut wooden decoration.
■ Between 1878 and 1882 the commercial harbour and the railroad which connects it with the main producing regions of the island are at the root of many example of construction which are still there nowadays. These were company flat for staff, drawn by the engineers who reproduced along the route the same buildings with some variants.
However, it’s at the “grande chaloupe” station, which were a strategic railroad knot, that one of these company flat of an old railroad’s employee, is the best preserved.
In the continuation of its housing, the latter has a small garden where you can find a kitchen.
■ Then, Reunion knew a period of prosperity between 1920 and 1930. Luxurious Creole houses appeared.
The "Valliamé house ", is one of them. It is Léopold Martin, who enlarged and embellished the house, in the middle of 1920, by modifying its plan and its rises, giving it his current configuration.
At the ground floor as on the first floor, rooms are symmetrically disposed. This internal distribution of rooms, on both sides of a central axis is characteristic of the Creole architecture.
The facade on three levels with its bow window get inspired from the Art deco, a European style in vogue during this period. This creolized version is a unique example on the island. Everything in this beautiful dwelling is only refinement and elegance.
■ However, during the 1950’s, some rich families of Reunion decided to build modern houses with an architecture that evoke, with a few years of gap, the style of years 1930-1940 in Europe. It is then the period when architects proposed new forms of housing environment.
The "Fanucci house ", name of the owner who built it, is one of the rare examples of the spreading of this new esthetic on the island. Native from Mauritius Island, Robert Fanucci asked, to the Mauritian architects, to draw him a house for his family.
■ Finally, years 1960-1970 are major for the history of the architecture from Reunion.
It was necessary to build always more houses, always more buildings to accommodate a population whose the number increased considerably in two decades. It is years of "cases béton" with modern forms which now represent more than 80 % of the Reunion architectural heritage.
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“FROM 1940 TO THE END OF THE XXth CENTURIES” | Group C (NAIMA, ELEONORE, ANNE LYSE)
By the 1940s, new trends such as valances, railings and other wooden items openwork or cast iron appeared.
The years 1960-1970 are key to the history of the island's architecture. It was necessary to build more houses, more and more buildings to house a population whose number increases significantly in two decades.
These were the years of concrete boxes with very modern forms that now account for over 60% of Reunion architectural heritage.
The architecture of the second half of the twentieth century should be viewed with as much attention as the one inherited from the colonial period.
The big news with concrete box, it is the proliferation of houses with a floor with tile roof. If they often supersede in old city centers, wooden Creole houses, concrete cases develop from the 1960s on the outskirts, on the occasion of the creation of subdivisions on agricultural land
Let's focus on one architect :
The architect Jean Bossu or the modern architect marked Reunion Island by innovations, including its apparent concrete cubes. Many of his buildings gendarmerie of St. Benedict are on the list of historical monuments. His son, Jean-Michel took over with the famous villa PK8 also protected.
Jean Bossu (1912-1983)
In 1946, the departmentalization arrives with a lot of public buildings to achieve. Raphaël Babet, Mayor of Saint-Joseph, wants a school to train young farmers and launches for the first time on the island a tender for a design competition in 1949. Jean Bossu young metropolitan architect responds: the Agricultural College of St. Joseph will be his first work on the island. "With this school, Jean Bossu introduced by the elements and vocabulary of the architecture of the modern movement," says Vincent CASSAGNAUD, architect of buildings in France.
The Agriculture and Forestry Department
This large administrative complex was completed in 1970 in the Providence Park. It is remarkable for its good state of preservation. The establishment of three buildings made by the Hunchback agency performs slightly away from the main axis that leads to the old penitentiary. The set firmly in a horizontal dominant because no building exceeds two levels.
Every effort has been made to ensure that new buildings do not interfere with the original composition and is based naturally in the gentle slope of the land. A sort of feigned disorder, calculated nonchalance, seems to preside over the implementation of each deskbar that one discovers successively anchored on the floor, one behind the other. Far from stiffness, any austerity all gives a rather nice image of the county administration. It must be said that the quality of the plant environment also brings a lot of pleasure instead. The first building articulates two wings of unequal heights (respectively one and two levels), which fits one under the other. This scholarly figure, Jean Bossu called a "chisel", is typical of the latest way to the architect. It denotes a taste for what the "squeaks" could be called geometric. Obviously, the building entrance is wedged at this joint. It is marked by a large awning gushing from the facade whose curvilinear profile takes a well-known pattern The Corbusier1. But not without some humor, the quote is diverted because the awning is installed at right angles to the use that was the famous architect, with, moreover, supported by slightly misaligned concrete. More than the conventional layout of offices, it is the facade that command attention. Everything is done to make people forget visitors the systematization of constructive frame rate of 4 m that all buildings. Never the eye perceives the slightest repeatability through scholarly work overlap of each span always different from one to another. In addition, to a depth of 70 cm, the architect sets up a series of storage or vertical or horizontal spandrel up or transom height, which, seen from the outside, are all blind parts . This work on the thickness of the facade is one of the most accomplished that the architect has made. It is quite similar to that of Tiaret Prefecture conducted in Algeria at the same time. "
Group D : XXIth century (Cedric, Joachim, Elea, Mylene, Korhi)
- And nowadays in the XXIth century, architecturaly speaking, Reunion island have really been modernized. There's actually different types of house which come from different periods, from different eras. But this century was the century of novelty, it brang other new types of building, of infrastructures, of houses, etc which are useful for living, working or having hobbies, as for exapmle, the Business Center « Cadjee » had been built in 2005. It has many purposes, as restaurant, TV news place, room of receptions, it also contains lots of offices, … And in the following picture you will see that this building doesn't look like any else other in whole Reunion Island.
