Les tours Labourdette à Marseille. Du modernisme fonctionnaliste à l'habiter populaire

The chapter illustrates the shift in the population inhabiting a 3-set of modernist towers built in Marseille by the architect J. H. Labourdette in 1960. The functionalist-style of the buildings, in reinforced concrete, was part of a renewal plan to raise the appeal of an abandoned area between Belsunce and the place called "de la Bourse". It was a successful bid to get a renovated affluent middle-class enclave amid an otherwise crowded, popular and chaotic district. If such a plan was consistent with 60s-70s housing policies displacing lower classes towards satellite cities, over the decades, a steady "re-appropriation by osmosi" has been shaping a nonconforming urban outcome of residential mixité and lower classes mobility. Today, half century later, the towers are inhabited by popular classes too. In 2007, the towers were awarded the 20th century Heritage label because of its multicultural mark