Rue des Mésanges

“I’m a child of the Rennes periurbanisation. I grew up in Le Rheu, 14 kilometres west of Rennes ; in a middle-class family. We lived on a new private housing-estate, which had all the amenities but no identity or history. When I moved to live in Paris, I was incapable of saying where I came from. I was from neither town nor country. Not from the typical Breton town or from suburbia. From nowhere? Le Rheu, Vern-sur-Seiche, Chavagne’ I grew up to the rhythm of these newly developing rural towns, which now have some 10 000 inhabitants. I ended up thinking that they held no interest, were devoid of life. That there was nothing to say about them. I was wrong’ Le Rheu was a pilot project of its time: the first garden-town in France.” (Philippe Baron)