La conception de l’usine Dassault de Mérignac dans l’histoire architecturale aéronautique française, de l’entre-deux-guerres à la guerre froide

Abstract

The Heritage and Inventory Services of Bordeaux, in the recently-formed Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes region, have recently undertaken a study of the aeronautical industrial heritage. This was, and is, a leading sector at the regional level and comprises four sites belonging to Dassault Aviation, the oldest of which is the Merignac factory, near Bordeaux. The plant was originally built between 1949 and 1966 to the designs of the architect Georges Hennequin (1893-1969) who had been a collaborator since 1930 of Marcel Bloch (1892-1986), who adopted the name of Dassault after the Second World War. Hennequin contributed to the development of a specific type of architecture for aviation, renewing the aesthetics of industrial construction and integrating notions of scientific management. From the interwar period up to the Cold War, the study of Bloch’s factories and the Merignac buildings in particular captures the detail of architectural evolution in relation to aircraft production. This article is a contribution then to a little-known aspect of architectural history and shows how the erecting halls of Merignac refer to the aesthetic and technical notions of the time in which hygienics, the division of labour and flexibility were the watchwords. More specifically, the analysis of the assembly building designed for the Mirage IV bomber in the 1960s demonstrates how the company became a high-tech one.

Keywords

• Bordeaux
• architecture
• industrial heritage
• Marcel Bloch
• Marcel Dassault
• Georges Hennequin