Download here the Visitor's guide. - Les Ateliers de Rennes

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L’étendue
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Re : histoire
Louis Arretche was one of the most prolific architects of France’s Trente
Glorieuses, a period of post-war boom, and he worked on a large number of
Public orders. From the end of the 60s to the end of the 70s, he played a role in
the construction of modern France, and contributed to the birth of a new Rennes:
the university campuses of Beaulieu (1956-1982) and Villejean (1963-1975), Liberté
(1961), the Telecommunications Centre (1975), and the Colombier neighbourhood
(1958-1987).
His Rennes developments in the 60s and 70s are representative, or you may
even say iconic, of a contemporary history of international architecture. In the
60s Arretche was a modernist, and in the 70s he became a futurist, and began
working with the concrete slab, which was typical of the period’s urbanism.
As an advisory architect to the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, Louis
Arretche completed several orders, including the monumental construction that
stands out in the Rennes cityscape like a space ship landed in the middle of the
city. This futurist inspired building in the shape of a tripod covers more than
15,000m². The Telecommunications Centre’s function required the construction of
very high Hertzian antenna, to which the architect added a control platform in the
shape of a “flying saucer”.