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From Le Parisien,
July 10, 2007.
This bar/restaurant on a boat
near Notre Dame has a
The weather here is still cool
and damp. Pigeons group
An amusement area in the Champ
de Mars. |
Tuesday, July 10 A couple days ago,
Bob Spencer signed my guestbook with a question about whether or not we have
ever visited the Cité de la Musique at the
south end of the Parc de la Villette. I wrote to him that yes, we had done that
years ago, but that is not my favorite part of It is not the
fault of la Villette that it hosts modern
architecture. La Villette
is the site of a former slaughterhouse area.
So it was never the most beautiful part of Well, today’s
newspaper tells me that there is even more to it than that. One of
President Mitterand’s last projects was to have
designed and constructed a complete music center – with a grand hall, a music
museum, and a conservatory of music, at the Parc de
la Villette.
The architect hired for the job was Christian de Portzamparc. The complex was opened in 1995. In 1994, the architect won the equivalent
of the Nobel Prize in architecture (the Pritzker-Price)
for the design of the conservatory. Now he is in
trouble for that work. The courts
decided yesterday that Portzamparc is responsible
for the malfunctions of this building.
The investigations and deliberations have taken twelve years! Now Portzamparc’s
office has been ordered to pay the Ministry of Culture 3M€ (three million
euros!). This is the cost of the
repairs, plus interest, plus the return of the architect’s fee. The problems
became apparent almost immediately. In
1995, the grand glass covering (verrière) had to be
replaced because it was in danger of falling.
Then someone realized that the doors to the fire extinguishers did not
work. Some exterior tiles, while
esthetically pleasing, proved to be too fragile. The wood floors in the recital rooms would
not support the weight of a piano. And
on, and on. The Cité that Bob was asking about is actually a separate
building, housing the music museum. A
quick visit to the museum’s web site today informs me that the museum is
closing for “refitting,” from June 25 to September 10. From September 11 to March 7, 2008, only
the 17th and 18th Century sections will be open. The full re-opening of the museum is
expected on March 8, 2008. I cannot tell if the real reason for this “refitting” relates to
architectural defects. Who knows. But it does seem that 2007 is a bit soon
for a building built in 1994/95 to need to be “refitted.” We had a nice
dinner last night with The chef, Laurent
Houry, came out to chat with us at the end of the
evening. It turns out that he is a big
fan of Carl Hiassen, whose books
are evidently available in French.
(Laurent speaks no English, although his wife, Isabelle, is fluent in
English.) I told them (the
Californians and Chef Laurent) that the Florida of Carl Hiassen is the real |
