Amerindian habitat
The Amerindian peoples of French Guiana have left a unique architectural legacy: the carbet, whose name means "big hut". A carbet is a covered shelter with no walls or partitions, providing protection and ventilation. The original structure is made entirely of plant materials: wood for the frame, woven palm leaves for the roof. In the case of simple structures, the pillars supporting the whole are used to attach the hammocks, as the inhabitants never sleep on the ground. In this case, the kitchen and outbuildings have their own carbets, set slightly apart. In the case of multi-storey structures, where the floor is made of palm trunks, the kitchen is on the first floor and the bedroom is upstairs. Other carbets house different functions (shower room, workshops, etc.). Beautiful examples can be seen in Awala-Yalimapo. The carbet is also a place of welcome. This is particularly true of the Wayana tukusipan or community carbets. The most impressive of these is the Tukusipan Taluen , with its maluwana or sky hut, a wooden log covered with allegorical paintings, placed at the top of the 7-metre-high carbet. Today, this ancestral heritage is perpetuated by the construction of new villages and the use of carbets as sustainable tourism facilities.
Colonial heritage
French Guiana has long been the object of covetousness and tension, as evidenced by the remains of Fort Cépérou and the impressive brick and basalt silhouette of Fort Diamant. At the same time, colonial towns have developed in a way that gives pride of place to wide streets, green spaces and squares around which large administrative buildings stand, blending classical lines with Creole ingenuity. Cayenne is a good example, with its Place des Palmistes, public gardens and Town Hall. Whether modest huts or more opulent residences, Creole houses share common features: a brick base to protect against damp, a projecting roof to protect against the rain, a simple floor plan with rooms arranged in rows or around a corridor, openings in the form of jalousies and shutters, the presence of an open gallery surrounding the entire house and decorative wooden elements (lambrequins, friezes...). They can also be recognized by their colorful facades, sometimes embellished with beautiful wrought-iron balconies. The Maison Bleue in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni and the Maison Thémire in Cayenne are fine examples, as are the wooden houses in Saül. The mansions, also blending classical rigor and Creole richness, overlooked the dwellings, vast agricultural or industrial complexes based entirely on slavery. The Loyola and Vidal-Mondelice dwellings reveal both the engineering prowess developed (forges, mills, boiler rooms, aqueducts, etc.) and the reality of daily life, with the "nègre huts", summary dwellings for slaves, chapels - often made of wood - kitchens and hospitals. At the same time, a unique type of architecture developed in French Guiana, that of the Bushinenge, the slave-maroons. Combining African, Amerindian and European influences, they created a colorful habitat. The Alukus are known for their small houses built on raised ground and protected by an impressive inverted-V roof. When built on one level, these houses have no walls, the roof reaching right down to the ground. Constructed from wood and palm, these houses are richly decorated, especially the front gable, which is adorned with the colors of kopo futu tembé, a combination of interlaced geometric shapes painted and sculpted. Fine examples can be seen in Apatou and Papaïchton.
The shadow of the prison
The many abandoned "camps" illustrate the difficulty of living with this double-faced past, as evidenced by the development of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, with on one side the "official quarter" that Albert Londres nicknamed the "Little Paris", and on the other the "prison quarter". The streets of the former are wide and wooded, with an ingenious system of brick gutters, while the buildings that line them are protected by abundant walled gardens. Standardized huts and pavilions were also designed to house civil servants. A clean, well-kept appearance that contrasts with the austerity of the second, Camp de la Transportation, built as a military barracks. Alongside this prison architecture, a "convict architecture" also developed. These men, used as laborers, left their mark on many of the buildings they helped to construct. The Saint-Joseph church in Iracoubo, for example, was entirely decorated by Pierre Huguet, a convict whose superb fresco is considered a masterpiece of naive art, while the Île Royale chapel owes its panelling to convict Francis Lagrange. And take a close look at the bricks used in these buildings... manufactured locally by the prison administration (hence the AP seal), many of them were signed by prisoners from the ends of the earth.
Looking ahead
Since the 2000s, French Guiana has been stepping up rehabilitation campaigns for its heritage sites: the Creole houses of Cayenne, the penal colony of Ile du Salut and the former leper colony of Acarouany. At the same time, architects are increasingly turning to bioclimatic architecture to combat standardized concrete structures. The great symbol of this revival is the Maison des Cultures et des Mémoires de la Guyane in Cayenne, which is divided into two ensembles: on one side, the Hôpital Jean Martial, a Creole masterpiece, entirely rehabilitated to become a museum; and on the other, the archive center designed by D3 Architectes. Inspired by the Amerindian carbet, it comprises a monolith with a double concrete skin to protect the archives, encircled by reception areas (the reading room opened in October 2020!), the whole covered by a protective envelope of horizontal wooden slats. Astonishing!
