Mériadeck Quarter

The Mériadeck quarter is a large-scale high-rise estate that took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. Although many of Bordeaux’s citizens have never fully warmed to the area, it is popular with brutalist architecture enthusiasts, photographers, skateboarders, and urban dance groups.

Back in the Middle Ages, the area was marshland, but it gradually evolved into a residential district. It was named Mériadeck after an Archbishop who acquired the land before selling it off in individual plots. 

Over the centuries, the Mériadeck quarter developed into one of the otherwise bourgeois city’s more down-to-earth areas, known for its relaxed atmosphere and flea market, but also notorious for its seedy cabarets and prostitution. By the 1950s, the city authorities regarded Mériadeck as an unsanitary slum that needed to be entirely gutted and given a reboot. By 1971, more than 30 hectares were razed and gargantuan construction works were underway.

The first redevelopment project envisioned would have resulted in an estate composed solely of tall apartment blocks, one of which, Résidence du Château d’Eau, was completed in 1963. The approach changed in the mid-1960s when Bordeaux was designed as a métropole d’équilibre, or "balanced metropolis," intended to counterweight the dominance of France's largest cities and boost regional economic growth. It was therefore decided that the new Mériadeck quarter would combine housing with offices. 

City planner Jean Boyer teamed up with architects Paul Lagarde and Jean Willerval to conceive the revised project according to the modernist urbanisme sur dalle, or "concrete slab urbanism" philosophy, using raised esplanades and walkways to keep pedestrians and vehicles apart. It was also stipulated that all buildings would be cross-shaped—with a few exceptions, such as the former offices of the Caisse d’Epargne bank, whose circular units are reminiscent of the Guggenheim Museum in New York. 

The revamped Mériadeck never drew in the volume of businesses originally hoped for but rather became a hub for administrative services and welcomed a number of hotels. In the 1980s and 90s, a large indoor shopping center opened, followed by a modern municipal library and a skating rink. The latter also served as a concert venue for several years and is now best-known as home to the Boxers de Bordeaux, one of France’s leading ice hockey teams. 

Although earlier generations of residents were forcibly relocated to housing developments to the north and east of the city, hundreds of new apartments have since been built, and today it has evolved into a distinctive mixed-use district.