Abstract
Under the Occupation, a vast urban project was launched in the southern Marais district of Paris. Reputed to be insalubrious and denounced as a ghetto, îlot 16 focused all energies, and many architects seized on this urban operation as an unhoped-for opportunity to legitimize their intervention in the city. Between debates and concrete involvement in the Parisian field, historian I. Backouche analyzes the motives and effects of this mobilization of architects, placing it in a timeframe that does not isolate the Vichy period.
