Avant l’envol explores the actual state of a selection of relevant modernist public buildings in the main Ivorian city. As an architectural tour as well as a tribute to the remarkable architectural achievements of the 60s and 70s and to – among others architects– the great Henri Chomette, a special attention is given to users and passersby, to their gestures and ways of informally appropriating the spaces for their needs. Monumentality appears here as a reminder of the ambitious and utopian vision of an era and architecture itself becomes a metaphor for power that eventually reveals a state of lasting status quo.