Ville nouvelle de Mourenx, René-André Coulon, Philippe Douillet et Jean-Benjamin Maneval, 1956-1966, Pyrénées-Atlantiques

In 1962, Henri Lefebvre described Mourenx, a new town that he compared to Navarrenx his ‘old village’. We find there the first criticisms on modernism… of witch our current projects are probably not free of :

‘The text that the town the places before our eyes is perfectly legible, and also impoverished and clear despite the efforts of the architects to vary the lines. Surprise? Possibility? Vanished in this place that should have been a place of possibilities. In Mourenx, I read neither the centuries, nor time, nor the past, nor possibility.’

Henri Lefebvre, ‘Mourenx-ville nouvelle’, in Introduction à la modernité, Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1962