Cité de Refuge (Salvation Army Hostel)

In the aftermath of the First World War, the Salvation Army developed an ambitious architectural programme to help the most disadvantaged. The Cité de Refuge was Le Corbusier’s and Pierre Jeanneret’s third building for the Salvation Army, after the Annexe du Palais du Peuple and the Asile Flottant. Once again, it was entrusted to him by Albin Peyron, the territorial commander of the French Salvation Army, with generous funding from the Princesse de Polignac (Winnaretta Singer).

The building needed to meet three Salvation Army priorities: provide accommodation in night shelters; prepare and serve meals; ensure vocational rehabilitation in workshops.

Accommodation capacity was about five hundred beds in dormitories, or small rooms for single mothers with children. For these there was also a crèche (day nursery), at the time a rare facility.

Between June 1929 and June 1930, Le Corbusier designed five different projects for the Cité de Refuge. In the last of these, he removed two wings of the building to reduce construction and heating costs. These modifications also allowed him to comply with the dimensions fixed by the General Council for Civic Buildings. Work began with the laying of the first stone in June 1930, and the opening took place on 7 December, 1933.

Le Corbusier created an airtight building using what he called “exact respiration” based on the air conditioning principle while using forced-air heating. This was a concept the architect had theorized in the late 1920s and which he had tried without success to install in the Tsentrosoyuz building in Moscow.

The Cité de Refuge was therefore Le Corbusier’s first entirely airtight building, with a facade wholly sheathed in glass largely consisting of “Nevada” glass bricks. However, this initial version of the building, in particular the glass curtain-wall of the south facade, was later modified by the architects, both for reasons of thermal comfort and repair of war damage.

In 1935 the first modifications were made, the architects creating openings to reduce temperatures behind the fully glazed south facade.

Le Corbusier again modified this facade after the war, the Cité de Refuge having suffered significant bomb damage. Between 1948 and 1952, the curtain-walls were completely replaced. Le Corbusier’s new project provided for the creation of a brise-soleil in front of the polychrome joinery.

The exteriors of the Cité de Refuge were given historical monument status in 1974. What probably motivated this protection measure was an application for a building permit for an extension of the Cité de Refuge on the neighbouring plot of rue du Chevaleret in 1969.

in 1975 two permits were granted to the architects Georges Candilis and Philippe Verrey, one for renewing the facade of the Cité de Refuge, the other for building the “Centre Espoir.”

New work to bring the building into conformity was carried out between 1988 and 1994. This involved extensive modifications, particularly to the guardrails, frames and polychrome masonry spandrels.

The last restoration project for the City of Refuge ran from 2009 to 2015 and remedied various defects, while improving occupants’ comfort (replacement of the dormitories by individual rooms) and restoring or recreating spaces identified as heritage items. Show accomodation was also made available for visits.