Souvenir d´un Futur
Laurent Kronental
Paris, France
In a place that lives on memories, someone manages to show us what still inhabits in its walls.

With an analogic camera as his only tool, the photographer Laurent Kronental digs us into de center of some of the majestic urban developments built in the suburbs of Paris in the middle of the 19th century.  Souvenirs d´un Futur documents the life of senior citizens still living in those dwellings. Nowadays, the French society rejects these uninhabited urban landscapes because of its origins: address the housing crisis and suffocate the inflow of foreign migrants between de 50s and the 80s.The grandious efforts made to enhance the French values led into gigantic volumes closer to the modernist utopia than to a more appropriate human scale.

Image number 32 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Les Tours Aillaud, Emile Aillaud © Laurent Kronental
Image number 33 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Les Espaces d'Abraxas, Ricardo Bofill © Laurent Kronental
Image number 34 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Les Espaces d'Abraxas, Ricardo Bofill © Laurent Kronental

A great amount of architects showed interest for these projects. Some of the featured designs are Les Tours Aillaud, by Emile Aillaud, Les Damiers, in west Paris, and La Cité du Parc, by Jean Renaudie and Reneé Gailhoustet amongst others. All of them share a common aspect, the signs of long lives both in its façades and dwellers.

Image number 35 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
© Laurent Kronental
Image number 36 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
© Laurent Kronental
Image number 37 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Puteaux-La Défense© Laurent Kronental
Image number 38 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Les Tours Aillaud, Emile Aillaud © Laurent Kronental
Image number 39 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
© Laurent Kronental
Image number 40 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
© Laurent Kronental

Through this series, Laurent Kronental proves the poetry of aging environments slowly vanishing, and with them, the memory of modernist utopia

Image number 41 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Les Orgues de Flandre, Martin van Trek © Laurent Kronental
Image number 42 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Arènes de Picasso, Manuel Núñez Yanowsky © Laurent Kronental
Image number 43 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Les Tours Aillaud, Emile Aillaud © Laurent Kronental
Image number 44 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Cité Maurice-Thorez, Henri&Robert Chevallier; Cité du Parc, Jean Renaudie&Renée Gailhoustet © Laurent Kronental
Image number 45 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
© Laurent Kronental
Image number 46 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
© Laurent Kronental
Image number 47 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Les Espaces d'Abraxas, Ricardo Bofill © Laurent Kronental
Image number 48 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Le Viaduc et les Arcades du Lac, Ricardo Bofill © Laurent Kronental
Image number 49 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
© Laurent Kronental
Image number 50 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
© Laurent Kronental
Image number 51 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Les Espaces d'Abraxas, Ricardo Bofill © Laurent Kronental
Image number 52 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Les Damiers, Jacques Binoux © Laurent Kronental
Image number 53 of the current section of Souvenir d´un Futur of Cosentino USA
Le Viaduc et les Arcades du Lac, Ricardo Bofill © Laurent Kronental

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