Every city is confronted with the challenge of producing urban projects that contribute to a high quality, dynamic and sustainable urban future. How is Paris producing such projects?
Read my post on this subject on the Arcadis Cities Blog
The Ancien Régime’s Fatal Blow
The Grand Louvre by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners with SCAU won the AIA’s 25 year award for 2017.
AIA Architect published an article on the project a quarter century on penned by Dominic Mercier, for which I was interviewed.
You can read the piece at The Ancient Regime’s Fatal Blow on the AIA Architect web site.
Charles Percier at the Château de Fontainebleau
Charles Percier, often known through his work as part of the duo Percier and Fontaine, is an architect of immense importance to French architectural history and to the Napoleonic period in particular. An exhibition at the Château de Fontainebleau affords a look at his work.
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Haussmann Redux at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal
15 years after the landmark Paris-Haussmann exhibition at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, the institution revisits the subject in a radically different way to reveal fresh insights. A more than worthwhile visit, on view until June 4th.
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Paris in the Twenty-First Century
This is an exceptionally exciting time for Paris. Through a raft of bold projects, the city is regaining the ambition and vision that propelled it to the forefront of modernity nearly two centuries ago. Paris is again on a quest to project itself as a leader on the global stage.
Photograph above: Mille Arbres by Sou Fujimoto Architects, Manal Rashdi OXO Architectes, Compagnie de Phalsbourg, Ogic, Morph
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The New Les Halles
This week was unveiled a vast and keenly awaited new building in the center of Paris. While the new Les Halles brings new amenities to Parisians and is without doubt an improvement on what was there before, it is also rife with failings and missed opportunities.
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Préserver l’intégrité architecturale et paysagère de la barrière d’Enfer
Une part essentielle du caractère de la place Denfert-Rochereau est apportée par les deux bâtiments de la barrière d’Enfer construits en 1785 par l’architecte Claude-Nicolas Ledoux. Un projet mal réfléchi de la Mairie de Paris pourrait compromettre l’intégrité architecturale et paysagère de ce patrimoine important et irait à contresens des objectifs de l’aménagement de la place.
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Napoleon and Paris at the Musée Carnavalet
The decisive transformation of Paris in the mid-nineteenth century took place under Napoleon III. But his uncle Napoleon, who held power over France and a broad swath of Europe several decades earlier, had his own notable role in the evolution of the city. In an exhibition now in its final days, the Musėe Carnavalet retraces the impact of Napoleon on the city of Paris.
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86-90 rue de Lourmel
Paris has a prestigious history, but it is also a living city. A new project in the 15th arrondissement gives a sense of how contemporary developments can create a dialogue with the multiple facets of the existing city in order to densify and enrich it.
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Eugène Viollet-le-Duc: Visions of an Architect
Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was a passionate, iconoclastic man who became one of the most influential architects of the nineteenth century. Generations have read his writings, followed his teachings and admired his buildings. Paris’s Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine has recently opened a new show that retraces the work of this inimitable and unparalleled figure.
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