Patrimonialiser les bases de sous-marins et le Mur de l’Atlantique

• Published in: In Situ
• Main Author: Claude Prelorenzo
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: French
• Published: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication
• Subjects: fortification; Twentieth century; Atlantic Wall; submarine base; Lorient; Bordeaux; Fine Arts; N; Northern Norway
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.4000/insitu.312; https://doaj.org/article/f9b7fe17d6044fc4b79d18cf3280dd2b

The Atlantic Wall stretches from the Spanish border to northern Norway. Within this system there are five bases for submarines: Dunkirk, Saint-Nazaire, Lorient, La Rochelle and Bordeaux. After a period of purgatory, with the painful memories of the wartime air raids which destroyed the cities around the bases, the buildings which the Atlantic Wall comprises have now entered the spheres of culture and tourism. What do these buildings bear witness to? Their frank modernism puts them at a precise moment in the history of architecture. Their heterogeneity makes them like UFOs, without any relation of scale or form to civil architecture. Their specific techniques of dissimulation and camouflage created new landscapes. But can these buildings be freed from the memories of their original military purpose? What message is delivered when they are recycled for new, cultural, leisure or commercial usages? Two submarine bases at Saint-Nazaire and at Lorient, are focussed on in this article.