Friday, June 16, 2006
Paris: In Spite of Itself
The Paris that we see, that we walk around in, that charms us so, is the Paris of 1850-1910. The buildings predominantly come from those years, certainly the physical layout of the city itself does. Were Paris to be razed and rebuilt today, odds are a radical change would be made. For the worst, we might decidedly add.
Paris is unique in that it was rather all built, or rebuilt at once. Vestiges of the medieval town are printed on the ground yes, but the typical 6-8 story building comes late in the 19th century. Paris is conspicuous for what it is absent: high rises for a start. There is one, rather out on its own, meant to be a counterpoint for the Eiffel Tower. It is at best mediocre, a blank symbol rather awaiting the wrecking ball. Other clusters of high-rises live in there own districts (Defense) as if quarantined, the majority of the modern, taller buildings, typical 15-20 story mid-rises have been banished to the suburbs.
If this creates the physical Paris that we love, then why am I intoning Paris: In Spite of Itself? This is because the city lives, perhaps unlike Venice or Bruge. Paris is the national seat. All the large corporations retain presences -or so it seemed to me - in central Paris. These organizations now are fighting their physical plant. There is not a large building for them to occupy, or to build. They have to be spread out in multiple locations, crammed into whatever structures they had in the past or anted up to purchase recently. The government buildings are much more spread out that in Washington DC, where they predominate their districts to the exclusions of restaurants and bars. In Paris rather a ministry will have a compound here, the blocks adjacent are typical mixes of housing, services, etc. And that ministry will no doubt have buildings elsewhere, close by, but out the door.
Paris now fights the demands of modern society, of a scope and organizational scale not imagined when Paris was laid in stone. This battle will determine the make-up of the city. For now, the vote is to keep the city as it is. Clearly, were Paris in America it would have been razed by now, and rebuilt with higher density and lower taste. So modern Paris now exists, in spite of its physical plant, in eternal conflict.
Paris is unique in that it was rather all built, or rebuilt at once. Vestiges of the medieval town are printed on the ground yes, but the typical 6-8 story building comes late in the 19th century. Paris is conspicuous for what it is absent: high rises for a start. There is one, rather out on its own, meant to be a counterpoint for the Eiffel Tower. It is at best mediocre, a blank symbol rather awaiting the wrecking ball. Other clusters of high-rises live in there own districts (Defense) as if quarantined, the majority of the modern, taller buildings, typical 15-20 story mid-rises have been banished to the suburbs.
If this creates the physical Paris that we love, then why am I intoning Paris: In Spite of Itself? This is because the city lives, perhaps unlike Venice or Bruge. Paris is the national seat. All the large corporations retain presences -or so it seemed to me - in central Paris. These organizations now are fighting their physical plant. There is not a large building for them to occupy, or to build. They have to be spread out in multiple locations, crammed into whatever structures they had in the past or anted up to purchase recently. The government buildings are much more spread out that in Washington DC, where they predominate their districts to the exclusions of restaurants and bars. In Paris rather a ministry will have a compound here, the blocks adjacent are typical mixes of housing, services, etc. And that ministry will no doubt have buildings elsewhere, close by, but out the door.
Paris now fights the demands of modern society, of a scope and organizational scale not imagined when Paris was laid in stone. This battle will determine the make-up of the city. For now, the vote is to keep the city as it is. Clearly, were Paris in America it would have been razed by now, and rebuilt with higher density and lower taste. So modern Paris now exists, in spite of its physical plant, in eternal conflict.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
Paris Is Closed
Do not try to eat, shop, buy a ticket, or go to a show in Paris. The shop/Opera/ticket window/store/restaurant is closed. Which is annoying. Myself, I so wanted to go the Opera, just to get inside, but there were no performances the week I was there. Not in the other, newer Opera house either. Maybe the Opera doesn’t have a lot of shows, I’m not a veteran, but the schedule seemed pretty sparse. The line to buy a train ticket from CDG to the city was reminiscent of the Post Office in New York on April 14th. Yes there were automated machines, but they only took French issued credit cards. Or coins. My oydessy, my introduction to France, was hiking the half a kilometer back to the terminal and, since the money changing place was closed, pleading with the Tabac shop for change, hiking half kilometer back, using the machine, and then hiking off again to get the train. The sentiment seemed to be Yes we have this beautiful train, in this skylit space, you just can’t get a ticket, and when you do, you can’t be under the light, you have to go into the cave to get a ticket. Now, in NYC, we have Penn Station, a basement of a depot, but we know we made a mistake.
I wanted to buy some nice leggings for my friend Natassa, but the store was closed that week. Stores might open say, 11 to 12:30 and then 2-5. Be ready. The big stores, the multinationals next to the heavily used train terminal, they are open till 7. On the flip side, Parisians know how to do Post Offices. They are everywhere, there are no lines, I was flabbergasted in the best way.
Of course, this is a two edged sword. To work in a shop would be so pleasant. You can go home for lunch. You could run errands after work, except every other place is closed. You can at least enjoy life. Why do French people live longer? Is it the red wine? No, it is the hours. The suspicion is nothing gets done in Paris. Some nice theories and writings, but philosophy is possible only with contemplative opportunities. So take your pick. Civilized work hours, or the commodity market we live in here in NYC. Make no mistake, part of that commodity is our flesh and blood. We are the nascent slaves of the republic, the republic of 7/11, of the disposable, of the big car, of the I gotta have it.
Why does that ticket machine only take French cards? Because they are more advanced than ours, they have a security chip in them.
I wanted to buy some nice leggings for my friend Natassa, but the store was closed that week. Stores might open say, 11 to 12:30 and then 2-5. Be ready. The big stores, the multinationals next to the heavily used train terminal, they are open till 7. On the flip side, Parisians know how to do Post Offices. They are everywhere, there are no lines, I was flabbergasted in the best way.
Of course, this is a two edged sword. To work in a shop would be so pleasant. You can go home for lunch. You could run errands after work, except every other place is closed. You can at least enjoy life. Why do French people live longer? Is it the red wine? No, it is the hours. The suspicion is nothing gets done in Paris. Some nice theories and writings, but philosophy is possible only with contemplative opportunities. So take your pick. Civilized work hours, or the commodity market we live in here in NYC. Make no mistake, part of that commodity is our flesh and blood. We are the nascent slaves of the republic, the republic of 7/11, of the disposable, of the big car, of the I gotta have it.
Why does that ticket machine only take French cards? Because they are more advanced than ours, they have a security chip in them.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Paris #3
Paris gardens are amazing. Lush and green, and open. Rarely does one see a fence. This openness, perhaps a virtue of the culture - the land of Foccault and Descartes and the magnet that drew Marx, Stein, and Hemingway, resonates throughout the city. Should you wish to touch the most venerable structures you can. Notre Dame, the Institut de France and many others. Only the Senat (the Palais du Luxembourg) was sealed off, and then, only in the back. Devoid of Jersey dividers on the sidewalks, and garbage trucks in the alleys. We have grow so accustomed to over-scaled cities here in the States, towering monsters, or else the single floor of the provincial village thrust into the metropolis that when we find ourselves in the midst of a properly scaled city, it seems like a toy, like a model, not a real city. Could a real city be this pleasant, this wonderful? Only Greenwich Village can match Paris in scale.
Yet the Jardins of Paris play an integral role in connecting the town. I have seen a 100 pictures of the Louver in architecture books. Stubbornly portrayed from the street side, the photos are tantamount to showing the loading dock of the UN headquarters. The Louvre plays out to the garden around it in its horseshoe enclosure. That Garden opens to the Tuilleries, a long park, .5 kilometers, that fronts the Seine. The Tuileries stretches to the Place de la Concorde which opens to yet another park the size of the Tuilleries which then leads to the axis of the Champs Elysees, ended by the Arc de Triomphe. These parks combine to overlay another scale upon the city. At once shrinking it and overlaying a grand scale, while opening up the city.
The parks, each of them, is magnificent in their own way. The worn wan grass of American parks is nowhere to be seen. The paths are the finest chalky white gravel, reflecting skylight, contrasting the green, and draining water faster than asphalt. The clutches of trees, formally planted in rows, cast a dark spell underneath them, affecting your perception of the rest, lightening the world.
There is more. The police huts in the Jardin du Luxembourg are perfect architectural structures, the best I of any building I saw in Paris.
Yet the Jardins of Paris play an integral role in connecting the town. I have seen a 100 pictures of the Louver in architecture books. Stubbornly portrayed from the street side, the photos are tantamount to showing the loading dock of the UN headquarters. The Louvre plays out to the garden around it in its horseshoe enclosure. That Garden opens to the Tuilleries, a long park, .5 kilometers, that fronts the Seine. The Tuileries stretches to the Place de la Concorde which opens to yet another park the size of the Tuilleries which then leads to the axis of the Champs Elysees, ended by the Arc de Triomphe. These parks combine to overlay another scale upon the city. At once shrinking it and overlaying a grand scale, while opening up the city.
The parks, each of them, is magnificent in their own way. The worn wan grass of American parks is nowhere to be seen. The paths are the finest chalky white gravel, reflecting skylight, contrasting the green, and draining water faster than asphalt. The clutches of trees, formally planted in rows, cast a dark spell underneath them, affecting your perception of the rest, lightening the world.
There is more. The police huts in the Jardin du Luxembourg are perfect architectural structures, the best I of any building I saw in Paris.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Paris #2: Lot Line Construction
Paris presents itself as a solid sheen of wall. Stately, indomitable, and most importantly consistently, these walls define the spatial experience of the street. Each building abuts directly the sidewalk. There are no recesses, no left over 5 feet, no setbacks. Similarly lacking are empty lots. Paris is a city devoid of street level parking lots, weed infested junk piles, or undesired property. The ramifications are multiple.
Stepping from New York, the best city in the States – without question or compare – to Paris one instantly sees the faults of New York. The wonders of a dynamic, non-gridded convergent street design was the matter of our last entry. The variety and sense of destination provided by Parisian streets are supplemented by the simple choice of lot line construction. We are not concerned here with suburban, freestanding buildings. Parisian buildings touch their neighbors, presenting their best face only to the street. Buildings abut to present to the street a continuous wall. Far from being oppressive, this unbroken wall separates street from building, defining both. Even small breaks, such as service entries, driveways, or 10 foot separations between edifices are rare to the point of non-existence. Back in New York now, the blocks appear fragmented, a desultory mix of intentions.
Remarkably, Paris, for all its unbroken massing, provides more street level transparency than New York. Lacking a hard winter, Paris can utilize flow through spaces on ground level. Arched openings provide physical and visual access to generous courtyards, some inside the building envelope, some in U shaped configurations, with the U opening to the street. Thus shaped, these buildings consist of three narrow wings, each getting near obscene amounts of Parisian skylight, glorious in the summer, perhaps necessary in the winter. The open side is walled and gated. These spatial explosions just on the other side of the façade divide are powerful draws, and provide a greater amount of spatial relief than New York. Not to mention a much greater quality of space. No, Paris does not compare to Rio as an open air city, but for its latitude, it makes quite the attempt.
Paradoxically, Paris can take an enveloping factor that at its worst becomes oppressive, and makes it open, and a visual delight, all driven by easily understood design considerations.
next: gardens
Stepping from New York, the best city in the States – without question or compare – to Paris one instantly sees the faults of New York. The wonders of a dynamic, non-gridded convergent street design was the matter of our last entry. The variety and sense of destination provided by Parisian streets are supplemented by the simple choice of lot line construction. We are not concerned here with suburban, freestanding buildings. Parisian buildings touch their neighbors, presenting their best face only to the street. Buildings abut to present to the street a continuous wall. Far from being oppressive, this unbroken wall separates street from building, defining both. Even small breaks, such as service entries, driveways, or 10 foot separations between edifices are rare to the point of non-existence. Back in New York now, the blocks appear fragmented, a desultory mix of intentions.
Remarkably, Paris, for all its unbroken massing, provides more street level transparency than New York. Lacking a hard winter, Paris can utilize flow through spaces on ground level. Arched openings provide physical and visual access to generous courtyards, some inside the building envelope, some in U shaped configurations, with the U opening to the street. Thus shaped, these buildings consist of three narrow wings, each getting near obscene amounts of Parisian skylight, glorious in the summer, perhaps necessary in the winter. The open side is walled and gated. These spatial explosions just on the other side of the façade divide are powerful draws, and provide a greater amount of spatial relief than New York. Not to mention a much greater quality of space. No, Paris does not compare to Rio as an open air city, but for its latitude, it makes quite the attempt.
Paradoxically, Paris can take an enveloping factor that at its worst becomes oppressive, and makes it open, and a visual delight, all driven by easily understood design considerations.
next: gardens
Friday, June 02, 2006
Paris #1
The beauty of Paris lies in the physical make-up of the town. Doesn't this sensibly follow for all beauty? That for beauty there must be a mechanism, some distinguishing feature, some discernable tendency? At times subtle, at times hidden, at times unseen, but ultimately restrained only by our limits of understanding.
We love Paris because the streets do not conform to a grid. This was the first noticeable difference, arriving as it was from New York. The streets in Paris converge like spokes on a wheel, to a hub. Hiding nothing, that word, hub, is exactly as it is, a collector, a focus point, a point different that the spoke. These hubs in Paris, called Plac – obviously the derivation of our evocative word place – create the differentiated space that creates a feeling of being somewhere. Ah, you’ve arrived. A journey of a few blocks is all that is required to arrive at the next place!
http://www.google.com/maphp?hl=en&tab=wl&q=paris
The Arc d’triumph defines one of these places. A more pedestrian place, but no less successful, is the Plac de Clichy.
The unrelenting grid of New York makes all similar. Indeed, this was the stated goal of the now infamous 1810 Plan for the city, which overlaid the non-cardinal direction grid over all Manhattan north of Houston Street. We discovery daily the ineptitude and lower standard of living inflicted upon us in the city by this decision. Instead of places, we have intersections. Have you much enjoyed standing in the middle of 6th and 57th? How fun. The additional cooling load demanded by the non cardinal orientation of all buildings is calculable only to those inured to tears. (this is because the vast majority of solar load is via afternoon exposure, exactly where Manhattan’s grid was aligned for traffic convenience. Note to dead planners: Paris has less traffic than New York. Vastly so.)
Ask 10 people to name their favorite neighborhood of New York, and the winner is Greenwich Village. The rotated sets of grids here collide to create hubs, end vistas down the streets with buildings, and make you feel pleasantly enveloped by their starts and stops, their short but meaningful durations, their sense of distinction (in both senses).
Paris charms without it’s grid. You live in a city, not a set of lines. Café life springs up at every hub. Distances shrink in the beauty and variety of the city. The Arc d’triumph astonishes because a city district revolves around it.
I should not have waited this long to mention that these wonderful radial streets of Paris, as they converge, are necessarily not parallel. Hence the blocks are gentle triangles. And so are the buildings. Each building can now be imbued with a subtlety varied floorplan. The triangular shape allows for a light well, a hollow space, at the center of the building. A hub so to speak. Just like the plan of the city. Synchronicity. God at work.
Next: Lot line construction and the spatial envelope of the city.
We love Paris because the streets do not conform to a grid. This was the first noticeable difference, arriving as it was from New York. The streets in Paris converge like spokes on a wheel, to a hub. Hiding nothing, that word, hub, is exactly as it is, a collector, a focus point, a point different that the spoke. These hubs in Paris, called Plac – obviously the derivation of our evocative word place – create the differentiated space that creates a feeling of being somewhere. Ah, you’ve arrived. A journey of a few blocks is all that is required to arrive at the next place!
http://www.google.com/maphp?hl=en&tab=wl&q=paris
The Arc d’triumph defines one of these places. A more pedestrian place, but no less successful, is the Plac de Clichy.
The unrelenting grid of New York makes all similar. Indeed, this was the stated goal of the now infamous 1810 Plan for the city, which overlaid the non-cardinal direction grid over all Manhattan north of Houston Street. We discovery daily the ineptitude and lower standard of living inflicted upon us in the city by this decision. Instead of places, we have intersections. Have you much enjoyed standing in the middle of 6th and 57th? How fun. The additional cooling load demanded by the non cardinal orientation of all buildings is calculable only to those inured to tears. (this is because the vast majority of solar load is via afternoon exposure, exactly where Manhattan’s grid was aligned for traffic convenience. Note to dead planners: Paris has less traffic than New York. Vastly so.)
Ask 10 people to name their favorite neighborhood of New York, and the winner is Greenwich Village. The rotated sets of grids here collide to create hubs, end vistas down the streets with buildings, and make you feel pleasantly enveloped by their starts and stops, their short but meaningful durations, their sense of distinction (in both senses).
Paris charms without it’s grid. You live in a city, not a set of lines. Café life springs up at every hub. Distances shrink in the beauty and variety of the city. The Arc d’triumph astonishes because a city district revolves around it.
I should not have waited this long to mention that these wonderful radial streets of Paris, as they converge, are necessarily not parallel. Hence the blocks are gentle triangles. And so are the buildings. Each building can now be imbued with a subtlety varied floorplan. The triangular shape allows for a light well, a hollow space, at the center of the building. A hub so to speak. Just like the plan of the city. Synchronicity. God at work.
Next: Lot line construction and the spatial envelope of the city.
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