Antigone is a neighbourhood of Montpellier,

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

, east of the city centre. It is best known for its architectural design by

Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura (RBTA) is a architecture firm that was founded in 1963 by Ricardo Bofill, initially as Taller de Arquitectura ("Architecture Workshop" in Spanish). It is headquartered in Sant Just Desvern near Barcelona, in ...

History and design

The district is built on the grounds of the former

Joffre Joseph Jacques Césaire Joffre (12 January 1852 – 3 January 1931) was a French general who served as Commander-in-Chief of French forces on the Western Front from the start of World War I until the end of 1916. He is best known for regroupi ...

Barracks, of which only Montpellier's

citadel A citadel is the core fortified area of a town or city. It may be a castle, fortress, or fortified center. The term is a diminutive of "city", meaning "little city", because it is a smaller part of the city of which it is the defensive core. I ...

remains. In 1977, Mayor Georges Frêche started the process that led to the construction of the district. The district's

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

was the Spaniard

Ricardo Bofill Ricardo Bofill Leví (; 5 December 1939 – 14 January 2022) was a Spanish architect from Catalonia. He founded Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura in 1963 and developed it into a leading international architectural and urban design practice. ...

and his Taller de Arquitectura. He designed a series of grand neo-classical structures, enlarging classical motifs such as

pediment Pediments are gables, usually of a triangular shape. Pediments are placed above the horizontal structure of the lintel, or entablature, if supported by columns. Pediments can contain an overdoor and are usually topped by hood moulds. A pedim ...

s, entablatures and

pilaster In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wal ...

s to gigantic scale. The district is located between the old centre of Montpellier and the river Lez. On the opposite side of the river is the ''Hôtel de la Région

Languedoc-Roussillon Languedoc-Roussillon (; oc, Lengadòc-Rosselhon ; ca, Llenguadoc-Rosselló) is a former administrative region of France. On 1 January 2016, it joined with the region of Midi-Pyrénées to become Occitania. It comprised five departments, and b ...

'', another Bofill design. Together they make for a unified visual axis one kilometre in length, nicknamed ''the Champs-Élysées of Montpellier''. After Antigone, more sites on this side of Montpellier were developed. The buildings consist mostly of low-income housing, public facilities and local shops. The Antigone project, on a 36-hectare plot, has been one of the largest single developments completed in

and attracted worldwide interest. In 1979, the newly elected municipal council of Montpellier decided to undertake urban development and develop a new district on a site near the city centre. The purpose of this

town-planning Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...

operation was to develop a new district along a central

axis An axis (plural ''axes'') is an imaginary line around which an object rotates or is symmetrical. Axis may also refer to: Mathematics * Axis of rotation: see rotation around a fixed axis * Axis (mathematics), a designator for a Cartesian-coordinat ...

which would provide for the city's balanced eastward expansion and link the historical centre to the river Lez. The architect Ricardo Bofill created the master plan and most of the buildings in Antigone. From the design of the plazas to the details of the facades and exterior furniture and landscape elements, everything is proportionally and thematically related, creating a stylistic unity in a district full of boulevards and plazas, parks, major residential areas, shops, schools and sports, cultural and administrative facilities. Antigone's projects designed by Bofill included: * La Place du Nombre d'Or (288 apartments and shops) * Les Echelles de la Ville (offices) * Les Rives du Lez (landscape design of Lez riverbed) * Headquarter of the Regional government of

* Le Port Juvénal (350 apartments) * Hotel

Mercure Mercure may refer to: * MERCURE, an atmospheric dispersion modelling CFD code developed by Électricité de France * Mercure Hotels, a chain of hotels run by Accor * French ship Mercure (1783), French ship ''Mercure'' (1783) * Dassault Mercure, a ...

(five-star hotel) * Le Parnasse (100 apartments) * Le Capitole (apartments and shops) * La Tour Europe (offices) * Les Guinguettes (two restaurants) * Olympic Swimming Pool of Montpellier

Critical reception and commentary

Prominent architectural historian

Vincent Scully Vincent Joseph Scully Jr. (August 21, 1920 – November 30, 2017) was an American art historian who was a Sterling Professor of the History of Art in Architecture at Yale University, and the author of several books on the subject. Architect Phil ...

wrote of the project in 1988: "Using classical architecture to provide human scale and proportion, Antigone intends to breaks up the monotony of precast construction to generate a palace for the people. It is the classical language rethought and reconstituted in terms of the contemporary industrial technique of precast concrete construction, assembled piece by piece in a discrete order even more systematic than that sustained in the older, carved and hand-modelled way of classical building." In an interview with architectural writer Carson Chan in 2014, Bofill said of Antigone: "I saw it as a model urban design project that could be a prototype for other places. I thought the French would take this project as a model for social housing and repeat it. I thought the world would take it as a model for housing developments. Then I realised that there could never be a model for a city or development. I think that kind of attitude toward development was my biggest mistake. There are no models for the future."

Transport

Antigone is served by lines 1 and 4 of the Montpellier tramway. There are three stops: Antigone, Léon Blum and Place de l'Europe.

Gallery

Image:Maquette Montpellier (4).JPG, Model Image:Antigone Esplanade de l'Europe.jpg, Antigone Esplanade de l'Europe north Image:QuartierAntigoneDecembre2021 2.jpg, Antigone by night, Montpellier, december 2021 Image:AntigoneDecembre2021.jpg, Antigone by night, Montpellier, december 2021

References

External links