In 2020, a major renovation campaign began at Les Orgues de Flandre. Still ongoing today, this project provides an opportunity to look back at the history of this landmark residential complex in Paris’s 19th arrondissement. Built between 1967 and 1979, it was awarded the “20th-Century Heritage” label in 2008.
A bold formal experiment
Commissioned by the Foyer du Fonctionnaire et de la Famille, the project was designed by German architect Martin Schulz van Treeck. It occupies a six-hectare site spanning two urban blocks between Avenue de Flandre and Avenue Curial. Built in reinforced concrete, the various buildings reflect the density and verticality prescribed by the 1959 Master Urban Development Plan.
The main entrance, located on Avenue de Flandre, opens onto a small forecourt marked by a stone gateway bearing the inscription “Porte des Flamands” (“Gate of the Flemings”). This remnant is the only surviving trace of the former workers’ housing estate that occupied the site from the mid-19th century onward. Although the original neighborhood was not preserved, its identity is subtly evoked through this historic feature.
On either side of this threshold stand two monumental buildings, designed like inverted pyramids. Attached to these striking structures are four spiral staircases treated as fully autonomous volumes—a tribute, or perhaps a subtle nod, to the work of renowned architect Louis Kahn, who, during the design of the Newton-Richards Medical Research Center (1957–1960), separated circulation elements into opaque brick towers attached to the laboratory spaces. This principle appears to be echoed by Martin Schulz van Treeck, although here the staircases are left exposed in order to emphasize their visual impact.
At the heart of the site, four highly irregular towers rise (25 to 38 stories), composed of stacked shafts of varying heights clustered around a hexagonal core. Their names, Fugue, Cantata, Prelude, and Sonata, further reinforce the reference to organ pipes.
A monumental project designed at a human scale
These buildings, with their varied morphologies, introduce formal diversity, far removed from the monotony of housing developments from the 1960s and 1970s, which were most often designed as simple rectangular blocks based on a strict, linear grid.
But beyond form, it is the spatial experience that truly matters here. The project provided the architect with an opportunity to put into practice his “relatoscope,” a miniature camera inspired by a medical endoscope, which he moved through architectural models. Now able to translate the future buildings’ volumes into human scale perception, Martin Schulz van Treeck takes on the role of a walker, imagining movement through the site and how it would be experienced. From these reflections emerges an airy urban composition, shaped by a strong interplay of compression and expansion.
A living place, a cinematic setting
Between the residential buildings, Martin Schulz van Treeck designed numerous facilities, ensuring the overall quality of use of the development : shops, parks, a swimming pool, a nursery school, a gymnasium, and a community center. Residents therefore have access to many public spaces where they can meet and gather.
This social and community dimension partly explains the success of the Orgues de Flandre in cinema. Beyond its iconic power and its visual and aesthetic potential, it is above all its ability to shape everyday life and the lived experience of its inhabitants that is particularly valued here. In the early 1990s, during the filming of his cult movie Le Péril jeune, the French director Cédric Klapisch chose the Orgues de Flandre as a setting for his characters, placing them within this environment of monumental and expressive forms.
Martin Schulz van Treeck
A German architect born in Berlin, Martin Schulz van Treeck (1928–1999) trained in Paris under Jean Ginsberg, a renowned figure in modern housing, whom he later became an assistant to. It was from this formative experience that he developed a distinctive trajectory and a professional career shaped by his own reflections.
In addition to the famous Orgues construction site, Martin Schulz van Treeck designed more modest and discreet projects, starting with the 34 artist studios located less than 100 meters from the site.
© Photos Matthieu Barani and Leticia Costache
Capucine Rigoigne
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