Curated by Jean-Louis Cohen (the mastermind of last summer’s blockbuster Corbusier retrospective at MoMA), the French pavilion takes a long glance at the country’s history of cast concrete residential architecture. Though the material and typology are more often associated with drab pre-fabricated blocks behind the Iron Curtain, the French pavilion offers a reminder that it was Corbusier and his ilk who popularized the material in geometric iterations around the globe.
Even more explicit is the discussion of the concrete block’s dual connotations: both a symbol of progress and repression. The display devoted to a housing estate built in southern France during the 1930s, which was used as a concentration camp during the Holocaust, is especially telling: the same blocks now operate again as residences. Architecture repeats itself, but memory is wiped clean.