De l’élément industriel au monument

Abstract

Making monuments out of industrial elements. The chimney of the Hoffmann-type kiln of a long-abandoned late nineteenth-century brickworks at Castelnau-d’Estretefonds (Haute-Garonne) was given particular architectural and decorative attention. This chimney occupies a key position in the landscape, next to a sixteenth-century château and the bell-tower of a church built in the nineteenth century. The chimney has recently been floodlit, giving it the same patrimonial importance as the two other elements of the site. Similarly, the early twentieth-century mining headstocks and winding gear, in the commune of Blaye-Les-Mines (Tarn), were dismantled a few years ago to be rebuilt in front of the new town hall. This is a particularly symbolic element of mining activity, conceived here too as a memorial to the lives lost in a mining disaster. It is to take its place in an even larger monumental complex. The isolation and monumentalisation of a particular industrial element is to be found in other parts of France than the Midi-Pyrénées region. The author examines this region but also cites the steam hammer at Le Creusot (Saône-et-Loire), dating from 1876 and erected as a monument at a cross-roads at the entrance to the town in 1969. The steam hammer at Saint-Juéry (Tarn), made in the United States around 1890, has similarly been put up as a monument at the entrance to that town.