A thousand youth clubs: architecture, mass leisure and the rejuvenation of post-war France

The relationship between mass leisure and architecture has too often been conceptualised unevenly. The canonical story of post-war France holds for example that politicians drafted heroic and encompassing leisure programmes that were subsequently concretised' by architects in their designs. Architecture figures in these histories as a passive portrayer of political ideas, as merely a mute accommodator of mass leisure programmes.In this article I want to suggest a more active role for architecture. I will develop two hypotheses. First, within the context of post-war France the concept of mass leisure' did not correspond to a pre-given definition of functions or programmes, nor to a well-established set of practices, that had to be housed, accommodated or staged by architecture and urban planning. On the contrary, mass leisure was a newfangled category that needed to be established and defined - and this took place through intense engagement with architecture. In other words, architects and architecture had an active role in the definition of mass leisure that reached far beyond an accommodating capacity. Secondly, architecture for mass leisure often had the function of a laboratory and fulfilled a paramount role in architectural culture. Within projects for mass leisure new architectural typologies were developed, and more importantly, new architectural definitions of urbanity were tested.