Photographs of Paris (and other places) by Marina Agostini, a young photographer and architect whose sensibility I greatly appreciate. Please visit a more complete selection of her work at parallelplans.tumblr.com.
Photographs reproduced by permission of the artist
Photographs of Cagliari, Italy by Stephane Kirkland
My piece on Seine Rive Gauche, billed as the largest urban project in Paris since Haussmann, generated a great deal of interest. This week I return to the area to check up on progress, and find development continuing along the whole length of the site.
This project is mobilizing considerable resources and is calling on France’s best architecture and urban design talents. Whatever one things of the design choices, it certainly represents a return to the spirit of urban ambition that made Paris what it is.
Last Thursday, June 21st, was a big day for the Place de la République as construction for the new lay-out of the square entered phase 2 (see background in my post Place de la République).
With this, an important symbol of the current city administration’s move away from the car-centric urban planning is beginning to be visible.
I continue my exploration of the petite couronne, the ring of municipalities around Paris proper that are at the center of the transformation of greater Paris. Today I travel south-east to Choisy-le-Roi, surely one of the most disconcerting mixes of periods and urban typologies from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century to be found anywhere.
The Paris public transportation authority, the RATP, has installed a new prototype of a multi-service bus stop. The concept is interesting: to move the bus stop from just being a shelter to becoming a center for all types of small urban functions. The prototype is up and intriguing Parisians on a site across the street from the Gare de Lyon.
Starting today, the Dutch Institute in Paris shows Gare du Nord, an exhibition that retraces Paris from the 1920s to the 1960s as portrayed by photographers from the Netherlands. Sensitively curated, this is a very exciting show, well worth the visit for anyone with a love for photography, Dutch art and culture, or Paris. And why, indeed, should one not love all three!
Mobility is central to the story of cities. Circuler, the new exhibition at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine in Paris takes a panoramic view of this subject to explore the links between movement and the built human environment.
Continue reading Circuler at the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine
The ring of towns adjacent to Paris known as the Petite Couronne is currently the most interesting part of the metropolis.
As separate entities from Paris proper, each municipality has developed its own identity and unique history. Now, however, with the gentrification of Paris pushing more and more middle-class people outside the city limits, they are changing. These are territories full of projects and ideas, often with young populations and key protagonists who tend to be more on the margin of the Parisian establishment.
The spectacular breadth and quality of the iconography spawned by Paris is, alone, a demonstration of the importance of this city in human culture.
Taschen has published an imposing photographic portrait of Paris, bolstered by an excellent text. It is a volume indispensable to anyone who wants a definitive – or as definitive as one can be in the limited space of 572 pages – iconographic recounting of the last 150 years in the life of Paris. Continue reading Paris: Portrait of a City by Jean-Claude Gautrand
