Thanks to Mary Campbell Gallagher's MCG@MaryCampbellGallagher.com call for traditional and classical architects and urbanists to attend the recent "Ugly Paris" debate 1.29.10 at the Grand Palais, architect and urbanist Ray Gindroz of Urban Design Associates attended and reports the following.  Thanks to Richard Dragisic for orignally alerting me to the debate - your one email lead to all this!  If you care about Paris, pay attention.  And act. Christine G. H. Franck.

From Ray Gindroz:

The event was a press conference with a diverse collection of journalists, eg: Le Figaro, France Telecom, Huffington Post, etc. About 70 people were there. Speakers were:

1. Michel Shulman: (Association des Journalistes du Patrimoine, President: Maison de l'Europe). He gave a general introduction: Concern that Paris was being destroyed by insensitive and ugly buildings and that something needed to be done to stop or even reverse the trend.

2. Corinne LaBalme: (editor: La Belle France). She suggested using George Ferguson's approach of creating an "X" list based on surveys to identify the most detested buildings in Paris. George developed this when he was President of the R.I.B.A. and got a lot of publicity for it. Worth a shot.

3. Francois Loyer: (Directeur de recherche honoraire au CNRS). He presented a very coherent set of criteria in the following categories:
a. Pedestrian Paris---the way in which architecture and the use of the public space was in harmony in the past
b. Urban Regulations: Consistency over centuries of rules for buildings (persistence of a system). Height: importance of obeying the rules and the impact of violations. Gabarit: the importance of the way in which the massing is articulated
c. The New Urban Form: The disasters of the Front de Seine and "l'architecture d'auteur"

4. Dominique Alba. A policy discussion about the way in which projects and architects are selected. A discussion of density, but Paris centre has three times the density of the high rise banlieues.

5.Rene...........: An architect: Two Points:
a. Role of detail in the character of urban space and architecture
b. Urban space required both harmony between horizontal and vertical surfaces and an architecture with scale and detail.

6. Gary Lee Kraus: An American journalist who pointed out that the real Paris was within the Peripherique and everything else was a disappointment to any one who comes to Paris.

There was no presentation of Sarko's Grand Paris--or even discussion of it, except for a few passing remarks. The session then opened to questions which were mostly statements with a question mark at the end.

-An architect from the Batiments de France agreed with the critiques but not with the condemnation of modernism;

-The reporter from Figaro pointed to Jean Nouvel's green facade at the Quai Branly museum (and was hooted down by the otherwise polite crowd);

-An English writer asked why no one did traditional architecture in Paris (he told me MCG notified him about the meeting);

-There was an extensive discussion of the way in which architects are selected, the role of politicians, the lack of public involvement in spite of the very negative feelings most people have about the new architecture; and discussion about particular incursions of inappropriate architecture in the traditional city--several people chiming in on whether the Boulevard St. Germain was looking sad.

I was the last to speak and said that there were two new radical avant garde movements in the US, England and Italy: The revival of traditional urbanism and the revival of classical architecture, that many young architects and planners were joining them--is there any such movement in France? If not why not?

The panel did not know, but two people from the audience spoke up. ( A sotto voce question: "Isn't that pastiche?)

I then quoted a Catalan urbanist who refers to the current building process as "urbanalization"--general applause and good cheer.

Several people came up with their cards, with interest in starting an exchange of ideas across the Atlantic and possibly a colloquium at some point in the future. More info. will be coming in.

Thank you. It was an entertaining morning that may just get us somewhere.

Ray Gindroz, FAIA

www.urbandesignassociates.com

THANK YOU RICHARD, MARY, AND RAY!

SARKOZY'S PLANS FOR PARIS--A CALL TO ACTION*

by

MARY CAMPBELL GALLAGHER, J.D., Ph.D.

If you love Paris, you may be interested to learn that the President of France, Nicholas Sarkozy, has announced a project called Grand Paris that will dramatically change the city.  Not only will Mr. Sarkozy build new subway lines, not only will he reconfigure the city, not only will he devise a way for Paris to work with its fractious suburbs, not only will he make Paris into the model green, post-Kyoto city, but he will also allow corporations to build towers in Paris, one of the world's few remaining low-rise cities. Mr. Sarkozy says his architects demand the towers.

Mr. Sarkozy's architects, all modernists, are Jean Nouvel, Christian de Portzamparc, Yves Lion, Richard Rogers and Stirk Harbour, Antoine Grumbach, Roland Castro, Djamel Klouche, Bernardo Secchi and Paola Vigano, Winy Maas, and Finn Geipel.  In 2008, Mr. Sarkozy asked them to create fanciful proposals for the Paris of 2050.  These proposals, in which towers figured prominently, were on exhibit at the Cité de l'architecture et du patrimoine in Paris through November. Then in April of 2009, he announced that henceforth the ten architects will direct the entire Grand Paris project in one common atelier.

Architects aside, the center-conservative Mr. Sarkozy and the Socialist Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, both want towers.  They aim to persuade international corporations to build in Paris--rather than in London or Dubai. In July of 2008, the Socialist-dominated Paris City Council agreed to study allowing office and other commercial towers at sites at six of the gates of Paris, along with low-income housing inside Paris. The first of the City's six towers is a gigantic glass triangle at the Porte de Versailles, designed by Pritzker-winners Herzog and de Meuron and a green building, to be sure.  But it is 211 meters, or 50 stories, tall, in a city of eight-story buildings, and it is on the Left Bank, smack in the line of sight of the 81-story Eiffel Tower.

This feels like selling the family jewels.  Paris is the world's city.  Towers 50 stories tall will change its low horizon.  They will arguably blight a gem of the French patrimony. Liberally allowing towers will depart from the 2,000-year history of Paris as a low city and upend laws on the books of Parisian urbanism for more than 300 years. Only in the late twentieth century did modernists lift the caps on height, and then only in the outer districts and in certain areas like the Front de Seine and La Défense, a designated suburb for corporate towers.  Once Parisians saw the Tour Montparnasse, they promptly brought many of those limits back down again.

Jonathan Glancey of the Guardian says M. Sarkozy and M. Delanoë will "bling the city up with a new generation of willfully crass skyscrapers spelling the names of Global Brands and Big Business in letters that make the illuminated signs of Times Square look as demure as candles in a Surrey church." Amen.

But from M. Sarkozy's viewpoint, Grand Paris is a practical solution to practical problems.  He hopes the State's vast investment in Grand Paris will pay off with profits that fill gaps in the French national budget. Starting with the new 35-billion euro Métro lines that will circle the city and connect the suburbs with each other, he also hopes Grand Paris will help solve one of his most pressing social problems.  He must somehow absorb the restive young immigrant populations living in the suburban towers-in-the-park on the far side of the eight-lane Périphérique.  They have high unemployment and crime rates and, as the world saw during notably severe rampages in 2005 and 2007, they set cars on fire.  Building the new Métro will give them construction jobs, and the Métro may eventually get them to work.  Although the Socialist local politicians describe the social challenge differently, everyone agrees on the importance of jobs and access to transit.

If Grand Paris causes us anxiety, I wonder how traditional architects and planners propose solving M. Sarkozy's economic and social problems.  How will they help Paris respond to the corporations and developers who might want to build skyscrapers?  Think of all those views! Think of all that money! Or will they try to compete with the City of London just by building office buildings contained in a Haussmannian envelope?

I wonder who the traditionalist critics of Grand Paris are, and where they are publishing.  Which architects and planners are proposing traditional alternatives for the Paris region in 2050?

Change is imminent.  The National Assembly passed the enabling law for Grand Paris in December, and the Senate will take it up in February.  The time for action is now.

###

* © Copyright Mary Campbell Gallagher 2010. All rights reserved.  Not to be quoted or utilized except with full attribution.

MCG@MaryCampbellGallagher.com
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