Saint-Joseph — A Memorial Made of Reinforced Concrete
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Transcript
After the destruction of 1944, Auguste Perret’s reconstruction team used reinforced concrete not as emergency material but as an architectural language. Saint-Joseph Church, completed under his direction after the war, turns that language into a memorial for the dead.
Its 107-metre lantern tower is filled with coloured glass by Marguerite Huré. Light changes the grey concrete from inside, making the building feel less like a bunker than its exterior first suggests.
The church embodies Le Havre’s central postwar problem: how do you commemorate destruction while building an optimistic modern city on the same ground?