Marcel Breuer and Jean Barets in Bayonne (1964-68): the use of architectural precast concrete panels in large public housing schemes

A new concept appeared in the field of precast concrete in the early 1960s: the architectural precast concrete panel. Unlike the first panels produced in post-war Europe, the architectural panel would be subject to an architect's specific design, not subject to contractors' patents, and applied to both singular, bespoke projects and large commercial projects with much repetitive construction. Marcel Breuer was the architect who more than any other supported this new concept, thanks to the knowledge of the precast concrete industry he had acquired in his early French projects. This paper highlights one of those works: the Zone à Urbaniser en Priorité in Sainte-Croix, Bayonne (1964-1968), by comparing it with previous projects. Within this project, Breuer and Jean Barets, chief engineer at the Compagnie Française d'Engineering Barets (COFEBA), developed a number of ideas relating to the design, manufacture and use on site of the architectural panel for the first time in a large public housing development in a competitive and costeffective way and under strict budgetary constraints. The solution that they put into practice in France, represented an ingenious alternative regarding to the types of panels that began to be commercialised in the USA few years before, that were based on a plant production and for which attachment sophisticated and expensive anchors should be employed.