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Ugly Paris Buildings |
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The Dark Side of the City of Light I know the beauty of Paris as well as anyone. I have basked in its glow, been inspired by it, written, and dreamt about it. I am not alone. People flock there by the millions riding on the myth of this the most beautiful city in the world. And few are disappointed. As long as they stay in the center of the city that is. Venture a short distance outside the center into the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th arrondisements and things change radically. Everything we think of as being Paris disappears as a grim urbanism takes over. Go further yet into the suburbs and one is submerged in the most drab and dismal of urban landscapes. The truth is, there are two Paris's. Central Paris, the Paris of the postcards where all the tourists congregate and swoon, and the Paris of the outer arrondisements where tourists never tread. Stay on the Métro a few more stops, travel a few minutes beyond central Paris, and you pass through an invisible veil from a wondrous dream into a cold shower of reality where whole neighborhoods have been devoured by the most repulsive architectural development. It wasn't always like that. Until the 1960s there was a consistency and continuity as one moved from the center of Paris towards the edge of the city and beyond. The center, of course, was always more dense, more plugged in, had more happening, and the further one went towards the edge of the city, less so. The consistency, however, was in the feel of things. Everything one encountered felt part of the same world. Be it picturesque, scenic, or even uninteresting, there was a continuity to it all. Then somewhere in the 1960s an urbanism on steroids hit the scene. A drive into Paris from the airport spells it out clearly. The architecture of alienation spills across the landscape like a B Hollywood horror movie. The center of Paris has been spared this fate, but only by a hair. Few people know that in the late 1950s, the Marais was so dilapidated that it was tagged a slum and slated for demolition. Hard to imagine that one of the most cherished quarters of Paris today might have disappeared. And what would we have today? No mystery there. A replica of the best that Detroit has to offer would have sprung up in its place. Fortunately for Paris and for the world a number of enlightened minds came together and saved the Marais not only for Paris but for the world.* Walking around the quarter today we can see glimpses of the Paris we would have today had this plan gone through. One example is at 6 Rue Beautreillis. A large arched entryway stands isolated, a lone vestige of the 18th century Hotel Raoul, a mansion torn down around 1966 and replaced with an apartment building outstanding for its banality. Another example is on the corner of Rue Barbette and Rue Elzévir. But the winner perhaps is on the corner of Rue Beaubourg and Rue Saint-Merri. Buildings as mediocre as these would go unnoticed in America and simply fade into a wash of greater mediocrity. But here in Paris, in the Marais, in the middle of a quarter known around the world for its architectural beauty! In those outer arrondisements mentioned above, plus the 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th, things get worse. There the tipping point has been reached and one is in for a shock. Giant urban renewal projects have erased whole neighborhoods à la Haussmann but without any of the visual interest of his work. And unlike the disaster of Les Halles, the old central market torn down and replaced in the 1970s with a misconceived garden and an underground shopping center, and today slated for demolition and grand redesign, these urban renewal projects and their blight are here to stay. In many cases the materials in these new quarters are second rate and age poorly. In the 20th arrondisement a building dating from the 1990s suffered from balconies falling off. In the 15th arrondisement, the Front de Seine, a pet project of President Pompidou who wanted to create a mini-Manhattan in central Paris, is so dilapidated that barely thirty years later it is in urgent need of a total overhaul. There is no patina there. Norma Evenson wrote a fine analysis of this misguided urban planning in her book Paris: A Century of Change, 1878-1978, (chapter 5) where she describes the demolition and rebuilding of Rue Nationale in the 13th arrondisement. Walk this street today and witness the deadness in the streets. The old neighborhood was poor to be sure, but at least had a there there. The street was lively with cafes, butcher shops, bakeries, grocery stores, etc., and provided a social glue bringing people together to create a vitality, a sense of place, and that thing so talked about today by so many - community. Walk down Rue Nationale today. The street is lined with blank facades set back from the street, and a heavy silence settles over everything. Speaking of the greatness of Paris Victor Hugo wrote, "This city does not belong to a people but to peoples . . . the human race has a right to Paris."** I concur wholeheartedly. And the French would agree. And that is why I hold Paris to a higher standard. They want to be seen as the most beautiful city in the world, then act like it. It is stunning to think that a culture with such a history of spectacular architecture and streetscapes can suffer a complete aesthetic collapse as if a state of collective amnesia has fallen over the population of urbanists and architects who design the city. Of course the reasons are many and complex. One can go to the roots of Modernism, to the grand aspirations of those who forged the way, we can look at budgets, code constraints and much more. But despite all the reasons about the why of a building, in the end the building must stand on its own with no justification of any kind. And what we are left with is the feeling that the structure elicits from us. Feeling. That's a dirty word in architectural circles but that's where the rubber meets the road and that is the one thing that is not factored into the equation here. What do we feel standing before the building, inside the building or in the new street? Does it invigorate us, excite us, stimulate our senses? Or do we feel a flatness, a boredom and emptiness, an existential ho-hum that leaves us scratching our heads wondering, "What were they thinking? I've been in buildings and on streets where I feel my spirit soar, others that feel so delicious I could eat them with a spoon. Surface and texture are important. Some surfaces are alive, present. They speak. Others are vacant, dead. Some people, in defense of these depravities, will argue that the buildings they replaced were uninhabitable, insalubrious, not fit for human habitation. This may be true in some cases but certainly not all. Paris has a long history of developers and urban planners not hesitating to tear down a building that is perfectly restorable in order to build something larger with more apartments in order to increase their bottom line. The mantra, "It's cheaper to tear down and rebuild than it is to restore" is universal. But let us imagine that the old buildings were uninhabitable. Why then is it impossible to design buildings that are interesting, compelling in their beauty, buildings that are pleasant to look at or simply make us feel good? Why do we see an endless array of buildings without character, brutal in their obedience to a rationality that does notinclude humans? The 19th arrondisement is full of this architecture. A most objectionable feature of new buildings in Paris is that once where there were shops, today there are blank facades. Paris is one of the great walking cities of the world because at eye level every building has a shop, boutique, or some type of commerce to engage us. Everything is visually interesting. New buildings with their blank facades rob us of this pleasure and plunge us into an urban anesthesia. One example is at 35 Rue Mazarine near Métro Odéon in the center of Paris. At first blush we see a building that resembles the other 18th century buildings on the street. Actually it dates from 1997. I walked by the day after the original building had been torn down and found a gaping hole. A neighbor on the street was aghast. The new building is consistent with the neighborhood in its overall design except that there is no commerce on the ground floor. At the street level all we see is a door to the luxury apartments upstairs plus a large door leading to the underground garage. There is no other building in the quarter with a blank facade such as this. It's as if part of the street has been rendered inert. Other examples in the 4th arrondisement are on Rue Ave Maria and Rue Geoffroy l'Asnier. Anyone interesting in seeing Paris's most recent approach to these issues should take the Métro to Tolbiac in the 13th arrondisement and walk around. A whole new quarter is being built from scratch around the new national library - Bibliotheque Nationale - a pet project of President Mitterand, opened in 1996. There has been plenty of heated public discussion about this place. The four towers of the library are designed to resemble open books. The architect, Dominique Perrault, failed to note that walls of glass windows are destructive to books - light! - and after a grand opening with much pomp and circumstance, a hasty plan was put in place to provide for curtains to protect the library's treasures. Some people have spoken with praise for the operation of the library, etc, once the bugs were worked out. Fine. But it is the exterior that counts. For it is through the exterior that the city has its interplay with the structure, an exterior that adds to or subtracts from the feeling of being in Paris. From the west side of the library the visitor must mount a most ungracious, wooden staircase. One would do well to be in preparation for a triathalon. Not to speak of the trek up such a staircase, in wet, slippery weather it is plain hazardous. Were people ever part of the equation here? I come back to "feeling." Walk around the neighborhood and see what it feels like for yourself. Tolbiac does not make the mistake of endless blank facades on new buildings, indeed there are shops, etc, but the emptiness in these versions of cookie cutter design is disheartening. Please do not mistake these thoughts and think that I am against change. I would have voiced no displeasure at the turn of the century, the 20th century that is, when Art Nouveau came on the scene, or later when Art Moderne, also known as Art Deco, appeared. Buildings in these styles are some of the most beautiful in Paris. Is it too much to demand that new buildings be as pleasing? In place of creativity we get a mind numbing mediocrity. If you want to rankle an architect today mention the word embellishment. Short of eliciting outright laughter you'll get a wry smile or perhaps only a blank look. For thousands of years schools of architecture were defined largely by different styles of embellishment. Then post-World War II arrived and it all disappeared. Clean unadorned surfaces have dominated since. Modernism has evolved into post-modern, and neo-modern, yet everything remains clean of embellishment. How unfortunate. I believe the eye loves to savor detail and nuance. I'm a big fan of Louis Sullivan, Charles Rennie Macintosh, Julia Morgan, Hundertwasser, Gaudi, Frank Lloyd Wright. Even Austrian architect Alfred Loos who railed against embellishment and wrote a famous work, Embellishment is Crime, is a favorite. His surfaces are flat but full of decoration nevertheless. Architectural icon Le Corbusier was clear in his contempt for embellishment and showed it in his "machines for living" concept of architectural design and urban planning. His uber-rationalist approach lead to his famous Plan Voisin of 1925 that called for the demolition of much of Paris's Right Bank, including the Marais and to erect in its place a grid of skyscrapers. Few people hated old Paris as much as he. My prediction is that some day a young, radical architect will come along and upset the apple cart with the idea of reintroducing embellishment. Architects will deride but the public will adore. p.s. The issues presented here are being played out, as we speak, in the 11th arrondisement of Paris. At 154 Rue Oberkampf in the Menilmontant quarter, a most charming nineteenth cobblestoned passageway, La Cité Durmar, lined on both sides with one and two story ateliers, is struggling for its dear life. Charm is not wanting, another word that will elicit a wry smile from your local architect. The cobblestones in the passageway come from none other than the Bastille and are classed of historic value and worth saving. Paris once had many of these sites but they've been gobbled up in developer's wet dreams - huge unappealing apartment complexes. One of the most beautiful, Cour du Dragon (Courtyard of the Dragon) built in 1715, was torn down in stages from 1926 to 1958. I visited Cité Durmar in October, 2007. The behemoth apartment complex in the distance of one of the photos shows the type of construction that will go up on this spot if the passageway is razed. Mayor Delanoe has done much to make Paris more habitable. I am told he wants to be remembered as one who respects "La Patrimoine," French heritage. What better place to show his sincerity than here. He has already reversed a years long policy of adapting the city to the automobile by widening sidewalks, narrowing streets and adding bike lanes. His Velib project, placing thousands of bicycles around Paris for practically free use has been wildly successful. Now he would do well to weigh in on the side of the little guy in this David and Goliath scenario. To see for yourself go to Google Earth. Enter the address 154 Rue Oberkampf, Paris, France, and fly over for a look. Check the button for Roads and the name Cité Durmar will come up. I photographed the handbill on the large door to the passageway. The first line reads "We, the occupants of la Cité Durmar need help to make known the danger we face." If the developers win and Cité Durmar is lost we can imagine the long list of reasons trotted out to justify the project. They will all make sense. And in that case the passing of Cité Durmar will go into the book I promise to write some day, When Terrible Things Are Done for Good Reasons. Save Cité Durmar! P.S. One person who can rail with the best of them on this subject is author James Howard Kunstler. At his website he has a great button, Eyesore Of The Month. Go to: http://www.kunstler.com Definitely worth a look. His selection for January 2008, an addition to the Akron Art Museum - is priceless. The architect's justification for their design is a study in mental auto-obfuscation. For another gem, click the button Previous Eyesore and go to June 2007 for a look at the new addition to the Hunter Museum of American Art in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Oh, the poor souls of Chattanooga who have to live with this abomination. The architect's description of his design is at least understandable but disjointed from reality. "The project brings balance to the overall facility and site composition." If anyone sees this design and agrees with the architect, please write and tell me what I'm missing. Note: The only photos here that are not mine are the Suburb of Nanterre the Campus of Jussieu and two of the three Durmar photos. To see more on Cité Durmar go to the French site http://www.jardinsenville.com. The Nanterre photo appeared in a magazine. I do not know the photographer. It is so illustrative of my point that I had to include it and can only hope that the photographer would not mind. Jussieu is a postcard too good to pass up. The others I shot as I flew about the city and cannot always give exact locations besides the arrondisement. *In 1961 a small group of Parisians passionate about the preservation of their city discovered a beautiful 17th century ceiling hidden behind a false 19th century plaster ceiling in the Hotel de Vigny on Rue du Port Royal. One of the group, Michel Raude, had the idea of putting on a concert of classical music in the mansion so as to show off the discovery to the public. The success of this event led to the creation of the Festival du Marais, a world class festival of theatre, dance and music taking place in the old mansions of the Marais. Parisians who had shunned the quarter came back by the thousands and delighted in a new found appreciation for this forgotten quarter. The festival's success brought the press and high marks went not only to the performances but also to the architectural heritage on the brink of demolition. André Malraux, Minister of Culture, stepped in in 1962 and in a landmark move created the Malraux Law declaring the Marais a Safeguarded Secteur thus prohibiting all demolition in the quarter. Incentives were put in place for property owners to renovate their buildings and bring them back to their original glory. This was a first. Individual buildings had been classes as historic monuments but never an entire quarter. Not only architectural gems were recognized but also the more modest buildings in the quarter that together made up a new concept of "urban fabric." **Quote taken from Norma Evenson. |
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Click here to see more of the Ugly Paris Buildings gallery.  6 Rue Beautreillis  Rue Elzévir  Rue Beaubourg  19th arrondisement Orges de Flandre  19th arrondisement Orges de Flandre  35 Rue Mazarine  Rue Ave Maria in the 1940s  Rue Ave Maria today. Same view.  Rue Geoffroy l'Asnier in the 1940s  Same view today  Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin - 1925  Cour du Dragon on Rue de Rennes, circa 1900  The Monoprix now stands in place of Cour du Dragon. In the distance, Boulevard Saint-Germain.  Cité Durmar  Cité Durmar  Cité Durmar  Cité Durmar  Cité Durmar  Cité Durmar |
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Required Reading The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kunstler is a most trenchant critique of the American urban landscape. Like Bob Dylan in the 1960s, Kunstler tells us what we already know but with a clarity and detail that helps us formulate our own thoughts and feelings. Tobacco manufacturers, not subject to the romance of their own advertising, refer to cigarettes as "nicotine delivery systems." How poetic. How real. Similarly Kunstler details how America, in all its modern permutations, has been turned into a delivery system for the personal automobile and the death of mass transit. His section on Robert Moses is enough to raise anyone's ire. His dissection of the transformation of his hometown Saratoga Springs, New York is a case study in what not to do and should be taught in every school of urban planning in the US.  Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities is a classic. As Rachel Carson's Silent Spring launched a generation into the environmental movement, this book galvanized throngs to protest the destructiveness of Robert Moses and his Adoration of the Auti (plural for auto). The impact of Jacobs' work rippled into large numbers of people marching in the streets of New York to stop Moses from carving up Lower Manhattan with a proposed expressway through The Village, Washington Square, etc. This was the first battle in his decades long career that he lost and he was not pleased.  Tom Wolfe's From Bauhaus To Our House is so brilliant that one wonders, "Didn't this stop everyone in their tracks and get them to rethink everything?" Hmm . . . guess not.  From A Cause To A Style by Nathan Glazer is a bit academic in style but most worthy in gaining an understanding of the process that begat The Great Bamboozle of modern architecture. He spells out its European origins, its evolution from the idealism of social reform, to its eventual dissolution into a celebration of the individual and the cult of personality.  John Silber's Architecture of The Absurd is a thoughtful and might I say heartfelt critique of contemporary architecture. His subtitle says it all, How "genius" disfigured a practical art. This could be a companion volume to the Glazer book.  See your local independent bookseller. |