In 2005, Lacaton+Vassal and architect Frédéric Druot won a competition to renovate the Tour Bois le Prêtre, a 17-story housing tower built in northern Paris in 1950s. They started its construction after the 2005 riots and Lubell describes their plan of action:
The team will cut away most of the thick concrete façade’s partitions, installing balconies and large sliding windows in their place. Besides opening the apartments to more natural light, the units are being significantly enlarged and opened, and the firm will install new heating, ventilation and electric systems.[2]
The notion of horizontal architectural intervention in public housing projects has the capability to infuse otherwise large faceless projects with the humanism that was part of the original ideology of modernism. But it can only truly do so if it is coupled with an awareness of the symbolic in architecture. Only then will it represent a turning point at which repetitive slabs intended to “cleanse” the city of the unwanted “riffraff” (the words Nicolas Sarkozy used to refer to immigrants in 2005) will turn into spaces for individuals to live in with integrity.[3]
Meanwhile, recent events have severe implications for the worsening social fabric in the suburbs: the rising youth unemployment rate, the obliteration of the Communist Party, the weakening of the Catholic Church, the weakening of family bonds, the growing influence of the radical Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front, and the rise of radical Islamic organizations in a land previously known for its secular society where different religious coexisted peacefully.[4]
Simply altering some façades, cutting away concrete, and introducing roof gardens in existing architecture rife with symbols of oppression is still a top-down approach to architecture. A more holistic approach is needed, where formal architectural interventions are coupled with an understanding of the social-symbolic context. Architects must build for France's North African immigrants. They must design homes for residents based on the resident's needs. They must acknowledge a place for the architecture's new residents in an increasingly diverse society.
In 2007, French President Nicolas Sarkozy organized the “Grand Pari(s)” competition, an ambitious $50 billion urban regeneration project for the Paris Metropolitan Region.[5] It was conceived as an “ideas” competition and ten teams of architects and urban planners were invited to suggest new ways to reorganize the French metropolis. Radically different approaches were proposed by world-renowned designers including Richard Rogers, Christian de Portzamparc, MVRDV and Jean Nouvel. The ten projects represent a snapshot of concepts addressing the sustainable reorganization of the metropolitan region. The proposals include ambitious plans to create new infrastructure, densify residential districts, promote the use of clean energy, and change the way Paris treats the Seine River.[6]
On December 1st 2010, Ariella Masboungi, adviser to the Minister of Culture and the President’s Chief Architect-Planner for French Urban Projects, presented the results of the Grand Pari(s) project to a small audience at Princeton University. Ms. Masboungi dismissed her légion d’honneur with a laugh, joking that it is “not a big deal for civil servants in France… French people feel entitled to hand out prizes.”[7] She described the project as an “adventure” [“pari” means “bet” or “gamble”] which was “imagined” by Sarkozy in 2007, and cited three major issues that led to it: (1) with the decentralization of urban planning under President Mitterand, the power to plan the metropolis was “no longer concentrated in the hands of the state,” but Sarkozy wanted a unified, cohesive vision for the entire region, (2) there was a need to improve the “image” of Paris in order to compete with cities like London and Berlin, and to attract investment from the “creative classes” and (3) in a post-Kyoto world of climate change, Paris should be the leader in imagining ecologically sustainable urban planning schemes. Missing from her discussion was the social challenge the metropolis faces. There was no mention of the riots of 2005. Haussmann’s narrative of sanitation and beauty had ignored the question of working class housing in the 1860s, and Masboungi’s story ignored the strained and class-based segregation in contemporary Paris. After the entries were submitted, however, President Sarkozy refused to actually implement any one of them:
In a speech at the end of April, Mr. Sarkozy said he would leave the dreams of reform to another generation. He said that the state would provide around $50 billion for what he said were complementary proposals for extended subway service that would allow people in the suburbs to travel between them without having to enter Paris, improve existing and saturated subway and train lines, tie some of Paris’s most marginalized and poor neighborhoods into the grid and finally connect all three Paris airports to efficient public transportation.[8]
It turned out that no one had found the perfect “solution.” Though Ms. Masboungi called the venture a “failure,” she picked out key lessons learned in the process. All teams, she said, were forced to reconcile theoretical models with heterogeneous ground realities and “space constraints.” Each team defined its own parameters and perimeter: Antoine Grumbach, for example, argued for a linear city along the Seine reaching out to the sea at Le Havre (Figure 83). Secondly, all teams unanimously rejected any kind of zoning laws and advocated for the removal of invisible urban barriers. These include pricey tickets for people travelling to the outer zones of the metropolis on the RER train. At the end of her presentation, Ms. Masboungi conceded that the main reason none of the plans were implemented may have been administrative: if Paris were to take over its banlieues at this point in time, then the current mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, who belongs to the Socialist Party, would gain control over hundreds of cités in an urban center larger than 100 square kilometers. That, she said, would make him more powerful than the President himself.
83. The Seine from Paris to Le Havre, a single extended
metropolis proposed by Antoine Grumbach
metropolis proposed by Antoine Grumbach
When I visited the Grand Pari(s) exhibition at the Cité Chaillot Gallery several months ago, I found the work of Milan-based urban planners Bernardo Secchi and Paola Viganò’s work extremely interesting. Out of the 10 projects, Secchi-Viganò's proposal stood out to me as the most compelling. While projects by architects like Jean Nouvel and Roland Castro employed grand gestures supported by flashy images depicting “green” utopias and problematically collapsing architecture and urbanism (Figures 84-85), Secchi-Viganò's project was grounded in social research. A presentation table was devoted to interviews of people from the Paris banlieues. What the French architects failed to see and what the Secchi-Viganò project grasped so clearly was Paris's acute social problem.
84. Jean Nouvel's vision for Gennevilliers
The 2005 riots and films such as Kassovitz's La Haine illustrate Secchi-Viganò's assertion that the Paris region is currently “impermeable.” Their proposal calls for a “porous, accessible, isotropic” city where the French idea of égalité is applied to improve the quality of existing spaces.[9] By using the same spaces in a better way, they propose better mobility and connectivity. Their project did not attempt to impose a singular vision over multiple scales.
85. Garden towers for the suburb of Vitry by Roland Castro and his atelier.
Antoine Grumbach’s scheme is an exact opposite of this open model and seeks to orchestrate the city in grand urban gestures and down to the minute scale. His project can be understood in the context of his writings in which he praises the work of Haussmann’s engineer, Adolf Alphand, on his work to create the Buttes-Chaumont park:
[T]he only true nature is the false one…. Henceforth, the Parisian, when confronted with the actual countryside could not help feeling instead of its enchantment, the absence of the Buttes-Chaumont, of its grandeur and other-worldliness, seemingly more natural than nature itself.[10]
In his 2007 project for the greater Paris region, Grumbach attempts to restore beauty to nature in the same meticulous way that Haussmann introduced beauty to Paris: in a highly controlled and unified vision that choreographs every view and every movement of the inhabitant. He leaves no room for chance encounters or surprises, no space for redundancy or noise.
86. Studio Associato Bernardo Secchi Paola Viganò
In contrast to Grumbach’s conception of a new Grand Pari(s), the Secchi-Viganò proposal appears modest: it takes a close look at the Paris region and proposes changes to improve the quality of existing spaces and infrastructure. As outsiders, Secchi and Viganò immediately notice that the territory of the metropolis is “non-porous, non-permeable and unconnected.”[11] Their solutions are architectural even though they do not prescribe any kind of precise architectural forms. Rather, their project is about creating the right urban condition for architecture. They speak about the possibility of using the space within Greater Paris differently in specific terms. For example, they seek to improve public transport within Greater Paris by creating tramways: “the money used to lay 1km of suburban train track can be used to build at least 10 km of tramway… in comparison to other big cities Paris is behind.”[12] The focus of their project are the people of Paris, and all of their solutions are meant to catalyze the shift from a current state of strained segregation to an imagines state of a more harmonious and well-connected city:
We’ve focused on social inequalities [because] Greater Paris is a huge kaleidoscope. The reality on the ground is more complex than the usual image of the poor north/east and the rich south/west; that isn’t a false image but it’s simply not detailed enough. If we want this to change, all people, home owners and tenants, need to be motivated and involved. In order to mobilize them, we mustn’t simply talk about energy problems, but also about improving their living conditions.
The Secchi-Viganò plan allows Paris to revitalize its existing urban space by designing for a diverse population, and to facilitate access to the center of the city. Instead of attempting to subvert Michel de Certeau’s “local authorities,” it engages them in dialogue. Figure 86 shows that while the comprehensive plan acknowledges social and historical context, it is not regimental at all scales. A new, isotropic urban scheme must remove barriers, facilitating mobility and access for everyone. It must not attempt to regiment everything but instead leave some variables undefined. This will create conditions for community involvement in the urban environment and the creation of a context in which the architecture of “noise” is successful.
[1] Jean-Louis Cohen, “Burning Issues in the Banlieues,” Log 7 (2006), 95.
[2] Sam Lubell, “In Wake of Paris Riots, Public Housing Authority Builds More, and Better Projects to Stem Dissaffection,” Architectural Record 195.1 (2007), 27.
[3] Jean-Louis Cohen, “Burning Issues in the Banlieues,” Log 7 (2006), 98.
[4] Jean-Louis Cohen, “Burning Issues in the Banlieues,” Log 7 (2006), 97.
[5] Walter Wells, “Big Plans for Grand Paris,” France Today (September 1st 2009), http://www.francetoday.com/articles/2009/09/01/big-plans-for-grand-paris.html, accessed March 10th 2010. Pari means bet or challenge.
[6] “Le Grand Pari de l’Agglomération Parisienne,” Ministry of Culture of the Republic of France, http://www.legrandparis.culture.gouv.fr/, accessed March 10th 2010.
[7] Ms. Ariella Masboungi’s quotes are taken from my own transcript of her presentation.
[8] Steven Erlanger, “A Paris Plan, Less Grand Than Gritty,” New York Times (June 10th 2009), http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/11/world/europe/11paris.html?_r=2&em , accessed March 15th 2010.
[9] Bernardo Secchi and Paola Viganò, Interview for the Grand Pari(s) project,http://www.legrandparis.culture.gouv.fr/, accessed April 1st, 2010.
[10] Antoine Grumbach, “The Promenades of Paris,” translated by Marlène Barsoum and Hélène Lipstadt, Oppositions 8 (MIT Press, Spring 1977), 66.
[11] Bernardo Secchi and Paola Viganò, Interview for the Grand Pari(s) project,http://www.legrandparis.culture.gouv.fr/, accessed April 1st, 2010.
[12] Bernardo Secchi and Paola Viganò, Interview for the Grand Pari(s) project,http://www.legrandparis.culture.gouv.fr/, accessed April 1st, 2010.
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