PARIS -- Every president of France's Fifth Republic has had his Pharaonic project, by which he believes he will leave his mark on the capital and French culture.François Mitterrand, a fierce Socialist known as the Sphinx, left the new French national library and, to continue the Ozymandias theme, the controversial glass pyramid in the Louvre. Jacques Chirac left the Musée du Quai Branly, an anthropological museum, with an argumentative design by the French architect Jean Nouvel.President Nicolas Sarkozy, no slouch, wants nothing more than to leave behind "Le Grand Paris." In more than a year of discussions, there have been some spectacular ideas and drawings by 10 teams of famous architects, drawn by the president's invitation to reimagine Paris as a city integrated with its suburbs and responsible in its environmental footprint. Antoine Grumbach imagines Paris stretching along the Seine to Le Havre and the sea. Roland Castro, whose team included a sociologist and a philosopher, proposed a 250-acre park circled by skyscrapers in La Courneuve, one of the grimmest of the poor Paris suburbs. Richard Rogers plans rooftop gardens and parks built above railway lines. Yves Lion sees Paris sprouting with fields and forests, with citizens able to cultivate their own vegetable patches, an unfortunate similarity to the necessities of Soviet cities.
François Mitterrand, a fierce Socialist known as the Sphinx, left the new French national library and, to continue the Ozymandias theme, the controversial glass pyramid in the Louvre. Jacques Chirac left the Musée du Quai Branly, an anthropological museum, with an argumentative design by the French architect Jean Nouvel.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, no slouch, wants nothing more than to leave behind "Le Grand Paris." In more than a year of discussions, there have been some spectacular ideas and drawings by 10 teams of famous architects, drawn by the president's invitation to reimagine Paris as a city integrated with its suburbs and responsible in its environmental footprint.
Antoine Grumbach imagines Paris stretching along the Seine to Le Havre and the sea. Roland Castro, whose team included a sociologist and a philosopher, proposed a 250-acre park circled by skyscrapers in La Courneuve, one of the grimmest of the poor Paris suburbs. Richard Rogers plans rooftop gardens and parks built above railway lines. Yves Lion sees Paris sprouting with fields and forests, with citizens able to cultivate their own vegetable patches, an unfortunate similarity to the necessities of Soviet cities.
Whatever, they should have left Castro with his mothballs in the wardrobe !!! "What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman
citizens able to cultivate their own vegetable patches, an unfortunate similarity to the necessities of Soviet cities.
Didn't they have an article in their lifestyle section not so long ago about how urban vegetable plots were the ultimate in greenery? Pfeeh, it's Soviet! In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
