Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [39]
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BUILDING NEW INSPIRATION
For the most part, skyscrapers and other tall buildings are restricted to La Défense Click here, but that doesn’t mean other parts of Paris are bereft of interesting and inspired new buildings. Some of our favourites:
1er arrondissement
Immeuble des Bons Enfants (Map; 182 rue St-Honoré; Palais Royal-Musée du Louvre) Home to the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (Ministry of Culture & Communication), this inspired structure (Francis Soler and Frédéric Druot, 2004) is actually two separate and disparate buildings ‘linked’ by a metallic net of what can only be described as tracery that allows in light and also allows the diversity of the existing buildings to be seen.
Marché de St-Honoré (Map; place du Marché St-Honoré; Tuileries or Opéra) This monumental glass hall (Ricardo Bofill, 1996) of offices and shops replaces an unsightly parking garage (now put underground) and evokes the wonderful passages couverts (covered shopping arcades) that begin a short distance to the northeast Click here.
7e arrondissement
Musée du Quai Branly Jean Nouvel’s structure of glass, wood and sod takes advantage of its 3-hectare experimental garden designed by Gilles Clément. A wall of the block facing the Seine is a ‘vertical garden’ Click here of no fewer than 15,000 plants representing 150 varieties.
9e arrondissement
Hôtel Drouot We like this zany structure (Jean-Jacques Fernier and André Biro, 1980), a rebuild of the mid-19th-century Hôtel Drouot, for its 1970s retro design.
10e arrondissement
Crèche (Map; 8ter rue des Récollets; Gare de l’Est) This day nursery (Marc Younan, 2002) of wood and resin in the garden of the Couvent des Récollets looks like a jumbled pile of gold- and mustard-coloured building blocks. A central glass atrium functions as a ‘village square’.
12e arrondissement
Cinémathèque Française The former American Centre (Frank Gehry, 1994), from the incomparable American architect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, is a fascinating building of creamy stone that looks, from some angles, as though it is falling in on itself.
Direction de l’Action Sociale Building (Map; 94-96 quai de la Rapée; Quai de la Rapée) The headquarters of Social Action (Aymeric Zublena, 1991) is unabashed in proclaiming the power of the state, with a huge square within and vast glass-and-metal gates. When the gates close, the square turns into an antechamber worthy of a palace.
13e arrondissement
Passerelle Simone de Beauvoir This delightful footbridge (Eiffel, 2006), built by the same company responsible for the icon, glides across the Seine, linking the 12e and 13e arrondissements, and at night looks like a blade of light.
14e arrondissement
Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain Jean Nouvel set to ‘conceal’ the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Arts when he designed it in 1993. In some ways the structure (lots of glass and what looks like scaffolding) appears at once both incomplete and invisible. There’s a ‘vertical garden’ Click here here too.
19e arrondissement
Les Orgues de Flandre (Map; 67-107 av de Flandre & 14-24 rue Archereau; Riquet) As outlandish a structure as you’ll find anywhere, these two enormous housing estates are known as ‘The Organs of Flanders’ due to their resemblance to that musical instrument and their street address. Storeys are stacked at oblique angles and the structures appear to be swaying, though they are firmly anchored at the end of a park south of the blvd Périphérique.
Philharmonie de Paris (Map; Parc de la Villette; Porte de Pantin) The ambitious new home of the Orchestre de Paris, due to open in 2012, will have an auditorium of 2400 ‘terrace’ seats surrounding the orchestra.
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However, not everything new, different and/or monumental that has appeared in the past two decades has been a government undertaking.