Villa Hennebique
The Villa Hennebique was built by the building contractor François Hennebique as a villa for himself and his extended family.
Geographical location
The villa is located in the Paris suburb of Bourg-la-Reine on the corner of avenue Lycée-Lakanal and avenue Victor-Hugo between the lines of the S-Bahn line RER B to Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse and the branch to the train station Robinson . The mailing address is 22, Avenue Victor-Hugo . The building stands on the south-eastern edge of the property, on which there was a large park at the time of construction.
history
Hennebique designed the villa himself and built it with his construction company in 1903. The building functioned as a showcase: it was supposed to show and advertise the innovative possibilities of reinforced concrete in residential construction, both technically and aesthetically. Hennebique presented his private house in detail in his company magazine and let visitors be guided through the building by prior arrangement. The business response to the experiment was low, however.
In the decades that followed, there were a number of changes that affected the appearance of the building. The park was partially sacrificed parking spaces, built on to the rear and a two-storey extension was added in the front area. The roof garden was abandoned and additional rooms were built. Inside, the room layout has been changed significantly. Today the house is divided into individual condominiums.
Building
building
Due to its advertising function, this family villa had open cantilever arms, large spans without supports, attached bay windows and large window areas in the outer walls. The statically supporting parts were originally shown facing concrete, today they are painted. The garden side with its terraces and turrets is structured in many ways. The structure is surmounted by a 40 meter high tower, originally a water tower to irrigate the built-in winter gardens and greenhouses .
Hennebique implemented a living concept in the house for himself and the families of his adult children. Three or four families could live here in an upper-class style. On the ground floor there were common lounge areas, lounges and rooms for childcare for the extended family, while on the upper floors there were apartments with their own terrace gardens where the individual families could withdraw. Technically everything was designed to integrate plants, especially flowers and light, into the living areas and to ensure good ventilation. Hennebique attached great importance to uniform temperature control and thermal insulation. The roof garden was also used for this purpose, with a layer of humus about one meter thick insulating the ceiling above the top floor. In front of the main rooms there was often an anteroom, largely made of glass walls, which offered space for plants, but also served as thermal insulation. On the roof there was a greenhouse and a vegetable garden for the kitchen. A garage opened onto avenue Lycée-Lakanal .
In contrast to the modern material and the modern construction method, the building's formal language , which is in some ways oriented towards historicism , and its originally very historicist furnishings.
meaning
Villa Hennebique is one of the earliest residential buildings to be built in reinforced concrete. It has been registered in the inventory of historical monuments since March 20, 1972 and was classified as Monument historique on January 27, 2012 .
literature
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Ferdinand Werner : The long way to new building . Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Worms 2016. ISBN 978-3-88462-372-5
- Volume 1: Concrete: 43 men invent the future .
- Volume 2: cement and artificial stone. The triumph of the imagination .
Web links
- Proof in the Base Mérimée .
- Jean-Pierre Lyonnet, Christine Desmoulin: Villas modern .
- NN: Villa Hennebique: Le manifeste du béton armé . In: AC Presse of August 4, 2015, accessed November 25, 2017.