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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2011 20:39:11 GMT
Sometimes I wonder what Paris would look like now if it had been bombed like so many other European cities during World War II. Oh, wait, a little part of it was bombed by the British and the Americans. The 14th, 15th and 16th arrondissements got hit, and even a little part of the 6th. Here's a pretty impressive report about it, filmed under Nazi control: www.ina.fr/histoire-et-conflits/seconde-guerre-mondiale/video/AFE86002151/bombardement-de-paris.fr.htmlThe commentary makes much ado about the innocent and peaceloving victims. Most of the targets were factories, such as the Citroën factory, and clearly also the Montparnasse train station. Some of the bombs missed, as always. Don't worry, bombing nations, nobody holds any of this against you. My great aunt and uncle, Lucienne and Emile, had their apartment destroyed by American bombs in the suburb of Courbevoie, and I never heard them express anything other than gratitude for the American liberation. Anyway, all of this is beside the point. Very little of Paris was bombed, unlike London, Brussels, Frankfurt, Helsinki, Berlin, Dresden, Warsaw, Caen, Le Havre, and so many other cities all over Europe. After the war, quite a few cities were destroyed by modern times and poor urban planning. Paris was damaged, but once again escaped mostly unscathed, compared to a lot of other places. That's what brings the most tourists in the world to Paris every year -- most of it is lovely. The vast majority of visitors do not realize that a lot of Paris was destroyed (60%!) in the 19th century by Baron Haussmann. He was noted for his "obsession" with straight lines and harmonious buildings. The cost of transforming Paris by Haussmann is estimated in current funds to have been 26 billion euros. He didn't stop there, of course. Other cities vastly remodeled by his plans include Bordeaux, Lille, Toulouse, Avignon, Montpellier, Toulon, Lyon, Nîmes, Marseille and Algiers. Okay -- still completely off track. Paris still had a few places left to develop in the last 20 or 30 years. Most of them were abandoned industrial zones. Urban planning is an obsession in France, so such areas have always had a master plan. I just wanted to show a few places, well inside the Paris city limits (i.e. not La Défense or places like that), which have been built in recent years, love it or hate it. Quite a bit of Paris could have looked like this if the rules were not so strict (all inherited from Baron Haussmann, who also set the height of buildings in the center back then). Even though I kind of like the diversity of it all, I don't think that Paris would be such a draw for tourists if a lot of Paris looked like this. Take the 13th arrondissement, for example -- not Chinatown, but the Massena area.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2011 20:44:07 GMT
Always a master plan and a promise of good things to come!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2011 20:54:38 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2011 21:05:47 GMT
I crossed the river into the 12th arrondissement (FMT territory!) to get a glimpse of the sports arena and the Ministry of Finance. This gave me a good view of some of the other new buildings in the 13th along the avenue de France, as well as the International Design Center reveling in its extreme greenness along the Seine (it is not a new building but a converted wharf building). Meanwhile, alongside the Gare de Lyon in the 12th, there are a number of other buildings to help make the area part of unrecognizable Paris. Gare de Lyon narrowly escaped demolition at the end of the 1960's. Actually, that station is so poorly organized, I can see how they were tempted.
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Post by mich64 on Feb 1, 2011 21:11:49 GMT
Kerouac, one word kept coming to mind with each picture passing by, cubicle.
Very interesting photos of the large business buildings, they exude modern professionalism, crisp, sharp edges.
On one of our visits to my husband's family in the Lorraine, my mother-in-law took us to all the places she lived during the war. There were many as they had to move from place to place combining with family after family due to their homes being bombed, until finally the Germans moved all the women and children to Paris where they stayed in churces until the end of the war.
After the war she, her mother and brother found there way home to find her father who had been returned from a work camp, they then scrambled to find housing and housing wares and began to live again, though nothing would ever be the same.
Her favorite hiding place was above a bakery, which is still there today. Her original family home was in the process of planned demolition in 2001, then when we returned in 2007 we found instead it was being restored. She was so pleased.
Cheers, Mich
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2011 21:28:17 GMT
I decided to move along to the 15th arrondissement, precisely to the Quai André Citroën area that was bombed during the war. That's because the Citroën vehicle factories were located there, as well as a number of other factories. They were all rebuilt after the war, but then around the 1970's and 1980's, all of the factories were kicked out of town and demolished. This fast food place on rue Linois is already in its second incarnation. The 1970's shopping mall of which it is a part was semi-demolished a couple of years ago and is being put back together, and this was the first part to be reconstructed! Gotta feed people.... This building was built in 1990 and believe it or not, my office was located on the 27th floor (of 28 floors) for more than 10 years. It has already been closed, gutted, redone, and is just on the verge of reopening. Gee, buildings used to last longer, didn't they? (It was kind of cool when calling people who had to come for some reason, giving an apparently normal Paris address, and then telling them "27th floor." WTF? reaction absolutely guaranteed because I'm pretty sure that there are only 2 office buildings in all of Paris with floors that high -- the other one being the Tour Montparnasse.) I walked along to the nearby Parc André Citroën, which has some other exotic buildings surrounding it. The park itself is rather unusual and has some unusual greenhouses in it, as well as a tethered hot air balloon for rising as high as the Eiffel Tower, weather permitting.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2011 21:40:30 GMT
I was practically next door to the Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou, the largest hospital in France and certainly one of the largest in Europe. I had never been there, so I decided to make a brief visit. A place like that pretty much convinces you that if they can't cure you, nobody can. The rest of the neighborhood was in the same architectural vein. The last thing at the edge of Paris was the headquarters of France Télévisions, the French public television networks, with channels France 2, France 3, France 4, France 5 and France O (that is the letter O and not a zero). The pari mutuel headquarters was next door, and that pretty much concluded my wanderings. However, there are quite a few other similar architectural areas along the outer rim of Paris, which I might add to this report some day.
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Post by frenchmystiquetour on Feb 1, 2011 23:45:09 GMT
I love it. That's some great architecture and great reporting and photography. We are definitely thinking alike as doing an expo on modern Paris was going to be an upcoming project for me. Maybe I'll do one on ugly modern architecture, perhaps throw in an industrial zone or two. Something that will repel people, which seems to come so naturally to me.
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Post by fumobici on Feb 2, 2011 0:54:12 GMT
Beautiful K. In spite of the fact that most of those photos could have been shot almost anywhere. The Monoprix sign is a giveaway though, I don't think those are found anywhere but in greater Paris (although I could be wrong). You have an artists eye, the composition of those photos is of a high standard.
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Post by bixaorellana on Feb 2, 2011 2:24:01 GMT
Unrecognizable, unexpected, and often, so much better than what might be expected in those areas.
The thing that most amazes me is the acres of glass, rivaling Dallas, in some cases. Some of those are grim, but others, such as your old office building and that first complex you show in Parc André Citroën are extremely nice. I'm not sure Baron Hausman was completely off track in limiting height and thus preventing the downtown canyon effect so prevalent all over the world. If the tallest buildings are no more than @28 floors, that must mean that there is a height restriction in effect, no?
That's the second hospital you've shown us with large open areas with greenery and shops. Certainly part of the outside looks scary and hospital-y, but the inside is much less grim than hospitals in the US.
I like the fun windows on the side of that Pomme de Pain building, but my hands-down favorite is the building shown in the 6th and 11th photos, with its benevolent Caligari effect.
Great report. I really like the way you show enough of an area to give an solid impression of it.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2011 5:57:35 GMT
The height limit of buildings in the center of Paris (excluding monumental buildings like the Opera) is eight floors.
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Post by tod2 on Feb 2, 2011 8:02:04 GMT
YOW! That is one hellavu informative photo essay of unrecognisable Paris - except I did recognise some of it! About 6 photos in all. That Pompidou Hospital is absolutely beautiful! What luck to be treated in a facility like that. Thanks for the brilliant photos Kerouac !
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Post by bjd on Feb 2, 2011 9:31:21 GMT
When I was looking for an apartment in Paris in 1998, a guy from an agency walked me around the Bastille/Gare de Lyon area. When I commented on the boring new buildings, he said that for the people living in them, they were much better than the slummy buildings that had been there before.
Fumobici, Monoprix exists all over France. I believe the stores belong to the same group as Galeries Lafayette.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 2, 2011 9:44:39 GMT
Not to mention Tunisia. And I have shopped at the Monoprix in Mauritius as well.
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Post by thill25 on Feb 3, 2011 17:12:27 GMT
Very cool photo essay...I had no idea about any of this...in my defense, I've only been to Paris once.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2011 17:59:04 GMT
The Bercy Expo office complex in the 12th arrondissement
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Post by lagatta on Mar 1, 2011 7:04:23 GMT
bjd, there was indeed a lot of blight near Gare de Lyon/Bastille, but I think nowadays many of those buildings, or at least the enveloppe, would be restored and saved.
There is one advantage to the ugly new residential buildings - they are more likely to have balconies. Sure, those exist in Hausmannian buildings, but only the grander ones. I've seen a lot of balconies on the backside of modern apartment blocks used for hanging out the washing as well as people hanging out period.
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Post by bjd on Mar 1, 2011 8:28:45 GMT
Lagatta, even then facades of nice buildings were saved. The old convent buildings on rue de Cîteaux were renovated into apartments, leaving just the facades. Many of the other buildings in the area were just not especially interesting/attractive/worth saving/ in good enough condition.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2012 12:29:25 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 28, 2012 8:15:21 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 28, 2012 8:34:13 GMT
U2 sang about "where the streets have no name" -- was the song about Paris? Actually, sometimes these streets have no name for six months or more until the council of the arrondissement finally agrees on something, and then it has to go to the city council for approval and also to make sure that the person honoured (if it is a person) has no skeletons in the closet, particularly regarding slavery, colonialism or the Holocaust.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 28, 2012 14:43:00 GMT
This is easily one of my favorite threads on AnyPort, & your recent additions really enhance it.
It's also a fun thread to scroll rapidly up and down -- nice cinematic effect.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2013 15:54:14 GMT
Remember this photo back near the beginning of the thread? Here is the building that they constructed at that location.
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Post by bjd on Jun 9, 2013 16:32:49 GMT
I suppose it's to keep the building cool on the inside when the sun shines on the windows, but at first glance it looks like a bunch of branches and trees got blown on by a tornado.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 9, 2013 16:47:08 GMT
My first thought when I saw that was also "tornado." It appears to be a new style, because there is a building alongside the Parc Martin Luther King which also uses that technique.
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Post by fumobici on Jun 9, 2013 23:58:44 GMT
It looks cheesy though because the pattern repeats. It's like an artist who pastes tiled patterns because he's too lazy to think through treating the whole... well as a whole.
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Post by fumobici on Jun 10, 2013 0:06:20 GMT
My first thought when I saw that was also "tornado." It appears to be a new style, because there is a building alongside the Parc Martin Luther King which also uses that technique. I can see its appeal, one can build a generic modern glass, steel and cement block like a million others and cheaply and easily differentiate it by taking some steel pipes welded identically into a pattern up into panels and hanging them over the facade. If these tubes were translucent plastic with RGB LEDs inside or something it would have been far more interesting. Like the phallic tower in Barcelona with the LEDs.
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Post by bjd on Jun 10, 2013 6:26:46 GMT
I suppose the pattern will look less repetitive once the various sticks start falling off randomly.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 10, 2013 11:26:56 GMT
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Post by fgrsk8r1970 on Jun 10, 2013 13:57:14 GMT
Very interesting K ! Some of these photos (in the beginning) reminded me of the residential area in Shanghai my GF lived in. You did capture my company in one of the photos Now I know how our Parisian office looks like from the outside LOL. Thanks, this is a very interesting thread .... as all of your reports are.
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