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Technological artefacts are physical/material as well as social constructions. Both the function and meaning of technical artefacts are mainly socially constructed. Usually the function of a technical artefact is taken to determine its use, but in particular in housing a close interrelation between use and meaning is also observed. The use and the meaning, as intended by technicians and architects, may differ from the use and the meaning of housing, as managed and used in the real world. In exceptional, mostly dramatic, cases the housing function of housing estates may finish within 10-20 years after completion. This paper presents the horrific case of Cite de la Muette (not far from Paris), a public housing project which may be understood as a form of a changing social shaping of technology during which the physical construction involved remained essentially the same. There was a huge gap between the modern ambitions of the architects and the engineers, and the difficult-to-let situation of the housing estate after completion. The use and meaning of the estate changed in a dramatic way when the housing function of the estate was replaced by another function, namely that of a transit camp for the deportation of Jews. This dramatic change in use has had an irreversible impact on the meaning of the estate; although it was used (partly) for social housing again after the Second World War, its symbolic legacy plays an important role in recent discussions about its ultimate fate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]