Organic regrouping of the elements considered necessary to the harmonious life of a community called the Phalange. The concept, very in favor in the intellectual mediums at the 19th century, was worked out by Charles Fourier and was promoted by idealistic industrialists like Jean-Baptiste André Godin.

It is a whole of residences organized around a central covered court, Community place of life.

In the theory of Charles Fourier, the phalanstery is a kind of co-operative hotel being able to accommodate 400 families (surroundings 2000 members) in the middle of field of 400 hectares where one cultivates the fruits and the flowers above all. Fourier will describe with leisure the heated corridors, the large refectories and the pleasant rooms.

Intended to shelter 1800 to 2000 members, the phalanstery is a building of very big size: a length of 600 measuring apparatuses, is approximately 1200 m, to compare with the 500m castle of Versailles; an occupied surface - frame and not built - of approximately 4 square kilometers; arcades, large galleries facilitating the meetings and circulation all times; specialized rooms of great dimension (central Turn-clock, Stock Exchange, Opera, workshops, kitchens); private apartments and many public rooms; wings reserved for the " caravansérail" and with the noisy activities; a main courtyard of 600m X 300m, in which the large gallery of Louvre would hold; a court of winter of 300 side m (to be compared with the 100m place of the Vosges) planted evergreen trees; gardens and multiple rural buildings…

The phalansteries were the subject of many attempts at application in France and to the United States at the 19th century, but all failed more or less quickly. But after 1968, the idea stimulated certain initiatives, in particular the community of Longo May in Provence.

A phalanstery called '' the Meeting '' was created with the Texas, with the support of Godin, by the polytechnician Victor Considering.

Most famous of the phalansteries was the Familistère of Guise, also created by Godin on plans which it had established itself, and which preserved its function at identical until in 1968. It is today classified under the Historic buildings, and always inhabited. The Godin company, for its part, always also exists (2004).

The principal building of the phalanstery called “Phalanstery of the poêlier Godin” (1887), still remains in Brussels along the channel of Willebroek.

See too

• Utopian socialism
• Phalanstery
• Social economy

External bonds

• On www.sciences-sociales.ens.fr

• http://amopie.free.fr/longo_mai.htm

Random links:

Eyelet of France | Mathematical theory of the percolation | Wine resulting from the biological vine growing | Conference of the training course | Collection the Key