La Perralière, Villeurbanne, 2023.
The Modern Movement, and by extension the invention of the modern city, raises the question of collective housing as a way of life, but also as an ideological project. Reflections on the rationalization of social housing and architectural functionalism emerged between the two world wars, but truly took off after the Second World War.
Excerpt from the text of the exhibition “Beloved Suburbs” – “an artistic immersion into the heart of the history of the suburbs to overcome clichés”, presented from April 11 to August 17, 2025 at the Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris.
In France, large housing estates have many faces: the Cité des 4000 (La Courneuve), the Grande Borne (Grigny), the Courtillières (Pantin), the Neuhof (Strasbourg), the Minguettes (Vénissieux), the Perralière (Villeurbanne)…
Woven Memories is a joint creation by Laure Abouaf, photographer, and Tatiana Bailly, textile artist, in the Perralière district in Villeurbanne (69), carried out following a sensitive commission from the Rize – Center of memories and culture of Villeurbanne.
The Perralière district is emblematic of an architectural period born from the large housing estates of the 1960s, embodying an idealized model of society.
Laure Abouaf explored this territory from April to May 2023, selecting 10 square-format color photographs that blend architectural views, depictions of green spaces, and portraits of residents from behind. Using Laure’s photographic prints, Tatiana Bailly brought these memories to life through textile work, scraping, and embroidery.
The area: La Perralière
The industrial boom of the late 19th century led to the rapid urbanization of Villeurbanne, which had available land. As early as 1880, the Gillet textile company decided to expand by establishing itself in what is now the La Perralière district (…) to build a dye works and its outbuildings there in 1889.
A Modern Architectural Language
The Perralière complex houses over 1,000 apartments distributed among three 11-story, 34-meter-high apartment blocks and eight 16-story, 47-meter-high towers. Influenced by the Modern Movement, Jean Dubuisson was a functionalist architect. The buildings he designed at Perralière feature simple, smooth geometric volumes, enlivened by clean lines. Jean Dubuisson’s architectural signature is evident on the façade through the interplay of vertical and horizontal lines, forming a uniform pattern inspired by the Scottish tartan weaving motif.
Spaces for relaxation and meeting
Jean Dubuisson paid particular attention to the integration of vegetation within his large housing complexes. At the heart of his project, he incorporated a park with rolling terrain, designed as a natural green space with freely planted trees.
Excerpts. By Sandrine Madjar, art historian
On the Perralière plaza, numerous commercial and community spaces have sprung up. Among them, Tatiana Bailly visited the C.A.M.S.P. (Center for Medical and Social Action) for the visually impaired in Villeurbanne, which opened in 1980.
She also explored the sound archives of Le Rize, from which she extracted two sentences from the testimonies of former students of a Villeurbanne school for the visually impaired. These words, imbued with meaning and memory, led her to transcribe them into Braille, using an approach that is sometimes figurative, sometimes abstract.
This process was enriched by a meeting with the association La Miète, which designs equipment adapted for visually impaired people through its Fab Lab. Together, these experiences fuel a reflection on how to make visible—or rather, tangible—the perception of the world when it is freed from sight.
At La Perralière, the architecture unfolds like a narrative. Designed by Lods and Dubuisson*, the building complex bears the imprint of modernism: geometric lines, repetitive structures, and patterns inspired by weaving. This motif language engages with the site’s industrial history, formerly occupied by the Gillet dye works, which left its mark on Villeurbanne’s working-class memory until 1966. Laure Abouaf extends its rigor and rhythm through photography: her images capture the structure of the place like threads stretched between yesterday and today. Tatiana Bailly, for her part, rewrites these surfaces with materials: the needle inscribes new layers, embroidery becomes a palimpsest, each stitch revealing a trace, a memory, a buried story. Between concrete and fabric, modernism and poetry, Woven Memories unfold as a space of resonance, where the visible gives way to a tactile and sensory experience of reality.
- Two buildings are now listed as 20th Century Heritage.
