Technical Artefacts as Physical and Social Constructions: The Case of Cité de la Muette

Abstract

Technological artefacts are physical/material as well as social constructions. Both the function and meaning of technical artefacts are mainly socially constructed. Usually the function of a technical artefact is taken to determine its use, but in particular in housing a close interrelation between use and meaning is also observed. The use and the meaning, as intended by technicians and architects, may differ from the use and the meaning of housing, as managed and used in the real world. In exceptional, mostly dramatic, cases the housing function of housing estates may finish within 10–20 years after completion. This paper presents the horrific case of Cité de la Muette (not far from Paris), a public housing project which may be understood as a form of a changing social shaping of technology during which the physical construction involved remained essentially the same. There was a huge gap between the modern ambitions of the architects and the engineers, and the difficult-to-let situation of the housing estate after completion. The use and meaning of the estate changed in a dramatic way when the housing function of the estate was replaced by another function, namely that of a transit camp for the deportation of Jews. This dramatic change in use has had an irreversible impact on the meaning of the estate; although it was used (partly) for social housing again after the Second World War, its symbolic legacy plays an important role in recent discussions about its ultimate fate.

Keywords:

• Technical artefact
• dual nature
• use plan theory
• meaning of technical artefacts
• grands ensembles
• Cité de la Muette
• public housing

Notes

¹ In fact, this assumption is not strictly necessary because of the phenomenon of malfunction: even a broken television set, which does not have the physical capacity to produce images, may be attributed the function of producing TV-images.

² More information about Cité de la Muette, focusing primarily upon its role during the Second World War, may be obtained from the following internet sources: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_de_Drancy, http://www.international.icomos.org/victoriafalls2003/papers/C2-2%20-%20Bourgon%20+%20photos.pdf, http://memorial-wlc.recette.lbn.fr/article.php?lang = fr&ModuleId = 72, and http://www.jewishgen.org/ForgottenCamps/Camps/DranFr.html (all accessed 11 September 2007).

³ A well-documented incident involved a group of prisoners who were kept in the cellars and who dug an escape tunnel under the main housing block in November 1943. They managed to excavate 38.5 m, just 1.5 m short of their target, before the Germans discovered the tunnel. The 14 alleged ringleaders of the attempted escape were interrogated and tortured. They were then deported on 20 November 1943. However, 12 managed to escape from the train itself, and joined the French resistance.

⁴ The buildings had huge cellars, known as ‘les caves’. These became dungeons in which the more troublesome prisoners were kept in total darkness, 24 hours a day.

⁵ These symbolic functions may be interpreted as status functions; see Searle (1995).

⁶ Searle distinguishes between symbolic, deontic, honorific and procedural status functions that may be attributed to objects; see Searle (1995). For a discussion of various types of functions of technical artefacts, including semiotic functions, from the point of view of (engineering) design, see Muller (2001) and Verbeek (2005).

⁷ The performance of symbolic functions by physical objects may require features that relate to their physical characteristics; for a discussion of performance criteria for symbolic functions, see Schiffer (1992).