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Post by bjd on Apr 13, 2015 7:30:44 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2015 8:04:38 GMT
Interesting, but all of the wild architectural projects are always like a haute couture show -- presenting ideas of what can be done with existing materials but without any regard for practical constraints or financial limitations. If you search back through plans for the city from the mid-20th century, you will even find the Seine covered over in the centre of Paris with expressways on both sides of Notre Dame -- and not as a joke!
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Post by bjd on Apr 13, 2015 9:12:47 GMT
I agree with you. Although I sometimes find Paris a bit "living museum", I find that architects often propose modern projects that are simply ugly -- Beaubourg, anyone?. The architect interviewed saying that Paris is afraid to try anything new is probably one of them.
Not to mention Presidents who want to leave monuments to their own glory.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2015 10:09:36 GMT
Well, actually just about the only reason there are monuments anywhere in the world is because presidents, kings, emperors, dictators, etc., want to leave monuments to their own glory.
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Post by fumobici on Apr 13, 2015 14:37:10 GMT
The program says that Paris is the only European capital without highrise construction, which of course isn't true. Rome within its tangenziale, and especially central Rome, are perhaps even freer of highrise architecture than Paris which has its Beaugrenelle, Front de Seine district and rather a lot in the southeast as well. In fact Italy, once you get south of the philistine Piedmont and Lombardy (Turin and Milan), is pretty much entirely and to its credit devoid of any highrise development at all. Highrise construction robs a city of its sky, of its light, its human scale and much of whatever character it may have possessed prior the cultural homogenization of the modern era. Paris would absolutely be harmed should such development ever become widespread in the center there, just as any place with an existing architectural patrimony worth protecting would. As for the redevelopment of the Champs-Élysées, I say bring it on, I hate it the way it is traffic choked and coldly commercial now and just want to get away as soon as possible when there. If there is a lack of housing in Paris maybe its because all the space is taken by parking--the apartment building I stayed in had nearly its entire lowest level eaten up by heated indoor parking spaces while a few blocks away in the Place des Vosges, Bengladeshis (who spoke beautiful, elegant English when I talked with them) slept rough in the cold in their neat camps they set up in the arcades every night.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2015 16:41:45 GMT
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