The architect and left-wing activist Roland Castro, who wanted to "remodel" the concrete cities of the big cities, died Thursday at the age of 82, his daughter Elisabeth Castro announced to AFP.
“He died peacefully very surrounded by the family in a Parisian hospital”,
she specified.
We owe Roland Castro the renovation of the Cité de la Caravelle in Villeneuve-la-Garenne, among others.
He also signed the Cité de la Bande Dessinée in Angoulême and the Bourse du Travail in the city of Saint-Denis.
He had acquired a certain notoriety by associating his vision of housing with a political fight.
The architect has never ceased to highlight the link between town planning and social ties, wishing to
“convince his fellow citizens and those who represent them that the suburbs are not catchalls for those excluded from society”.
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“Legend of architecture and urbanism, visionary left-wing activist, Roland Castro has left us. It leaves an indelible mark on our urban landscape. To the citizens, an inspiration. Goodbye and thank you, Roland,”
tweeted President Emmanuel Macron, at whose request Roland Castro wrote a report on the Greater Paris project in 2018.
“I will miss this warm friend, of all the fights and who had so many lives. (…) Paris will pay tribute to him”,
reacted on Twitter the mayor of the capital, Anne Hidalgo.
Born on October 16, 1940 in Limoges to Jewish parents, Roland Castro spent his early years in the Limousin hinterland, in one of the first resistance maquis.
From these four years, he will keep the idea that he must pay "a debt of existence to France".
After entering the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1958, he carried suitcases for the Algerian FLN, before joining the Union of Communist Students.
He will end up embracing Maoism and the revolutionary struggle, a banner under which he will militate in May 68.
In 1983, he co-founded “Banlieues 89” with his friend, town planner Michel Cantal-Dupart.
The initiative dates back to François Mitterrand, who entrusted an interministerial mission to Roland Castro.
More than 200 projects were submitted to Banlieues 89. But the operation came up against the financial reluctance of the government and Banlieues 89 disappeared in 1991. Sometimes Mitterrandian, sometimes a supporter of the PCF and more recently of Emmanuel Macron, Roland Castro had created his own party, the “Movement for Concrete Utopia”, with which he had launched himself in the presidential election of 2007, without collecting the necessary sponsorships.
The great dates of Roland Castro
Here are the main dates of the architect Roland Castro, who died Thursday at the age of 82:
October 16, 1940: birth in Limoges (Haute-Vienne)
1958: enters the Beaux-Arts de Paris, from which he graduated in 1965
1961: trip to Cuba, where he meets Fidel Castro and Che Guevara
1983: co-founds the collective "Banlieues 89" with the urban planner Michel Cantal-Dupart
1991: dissolution of "Banlieues 89" which does not collect the necessary funding for the implementation of projects
2007: presents his candidacy for the presidential election under the label "Movement for Concrete Utopia" but does not obtain the necessary sponsorships
2008: appointed by President Nicolas Sarkozy to head a team responsible for consulting on the "Grand Paris" project
2018: submits a report to President Emmanuel Macron on his vision of Greater Paris, proposing a “new model of a global metropolis”, circulating and attractive.
He advocates the disappearance of the device, which could be covered.
The reform of the Greater Paris Metropolis will remain a dead letter.
2019: participates in a collective of urban planners and art historians deeming "unacceptable" a shopping center and office project at the Gare du Nord.
The SNCF waives it in 2021, in particular because of an additional cost
March 9, 2023: death in a Paris hospital
