Getting Around Paris: A Prepositional Primer for the Boulevard Peripherique by David Goodman

Getting Around Paris

to Romina Canna

This project was funded by the Julia Amory Appleton Traveling Fellowship from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

ÂŠ David Goodman, 2010

Getting Around Paris

A Prepositional Primer for the Boulevard Périphérique

David Goodman

introduction conclusion notes

1 104 106

through

beside-beside-beside

over-under

notwithstanding

with respect to

despite

with

against

Introduction This is a book about prepositions and how to build them. It is also a book about Paris, but there is no shortage of books on that topic, any of which would likely give the reader a better -- or, at least, more complete -understanding of the city s inner workings, urban form, hidden or immediately evident charms, and history (architectural, intellectual, and otherwise). You will find little or none of that here. In fact, this book deals more with what happens where Paris ends (or begins to end) than with what goes on in the city itself. Yet this book could only be about Paris. All cities have peripheries, and many cities have clearly legible urban boundaries. But the border of Paris, like most things Parisian, is exceptional. The line that divides the capital from its less-glorious suburban region is drawn with a six-lane superhighway, the 35 kilometer-long Boulevard Périphérique expressway ring. Built on the site of an 1845 fortification wall, the Périphérique is singular, not only in its urban form, but also in the symbolic mark that it makes on the landscape; a child s diagram of Paris would consist of the vaguely elliptical Périphérique loop and the lazy curve of the Seine dividing the ring into unequal parts. It is this diagram that defines the basic form of the city, as the profile of the serrated coastline does for Manhattan or the concentric canal

Paris in two strokes: Périphérique and Seine

RATP: Paris transit logo

The Parisian (inside), the non-Parisian (outside)

rings do for Amsterdam. What makes the Périphérique unique is that it is at once a piece of entirely pragmatic heavy infrastructure, indistinguishable from thousands of ring-road expressways in thousands of cities, and an emphatic symbolic gesture, highly reactive and specific to its site, capable of representing Paris with a single traced line.

A history of borders: fortification rings

1. Jean-Louis Cohen, André Lortie. Des Fortifs Au Perif. Paris: Picard, 1991. p. 246.

It is no accident that the line dividing Paris from its surrounding metropolitan area should be so emphatically drawn. Few countries are as culturally and politically centralized as France, and it is only logical that the gates of the capital city should be clearly indicated. This border had traditionally been marked with a military fortification, from the 12th-century fortifications of Philppe-Auguste, to the successive fortification rings built in the 15th and 18th and 19th centuries. When the final fortification ring was dismantled following the First World War, Paris was briefly left without a physical barrier separating it from the surrounding communities, a situation which alarmed the city s planners: It is important, wrote the city s planning chief in 1943, to avoid at all costs that Paris flow into a suburbia that will bog it down for another century. Paris, grand salon of all Europe should be defined in an elegant and precise way, so that foreigners, approaching the Ilede-France, may say, Here is Paris, not to be confused 1 with Levallois, Aubervilliers, Pantin, Vitry or Malakoff... Enter the Périphérique. While it is doubtful that the superhighway ring was the sort of elegant demarcation this planner had in mind, one can not argue with the precision of the mark made by the roadway: six lanes of high-speed traffic establish quite emphatically the difference between Paris and Aubervilliers. There is no danger of confusion.

Places, Non-Places, and the Prepositional The Périphérique is easy to understand. It s a ring. It s an expressway. It s connected to other expressways that in turn link Paris to France and Europe. Everything inside it is Paris. Everything outside it is not. It is, in a way, part of a particularly French tradition of totalizing gestures ranging from the invention of the meter itself, to Versailles, the utopian drawings of Boulée, Le Corbusier s Radiant City, Ledoux s model city of Chaux, and, most recently, the encyclopedic pretensions of Perrault s Bibliothèque Nationale. It might also be possible to understand the Périphérique as what Marc Augé has called a non-space, a generic supermodern zone on the urban fringe that could easily be anywhere. If a place can be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity, Augé writes, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, 2 or concerned with identity will be a non-place. Augé argues that the network of superhighways, airports, suburban shopping malls and hotel chains constitute a network of non-spaces that forever points longingly toward the impeccably preserved museum-city of the past.

Model town of Chaux; Ledoux, 1775

Boulée s Metropolitan Library, 1788

2. Marc Augé (John Howe, trans,). Non Places: Introduction to an

It is tempting, and perhaps in part correct, to view the Périphérique with these readings in mind: it is part autonomous totalizing gesture, part infrastructural nonspace, relating more to the world of parking lots and suburban supermarkets than to the fine-grained texture of central Paris. Yet these readings fail to account for the very real ways in which the Boulevard Périphérique is intensely local, specific, and contingent. The roadway is

Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995. pp. 77-78.

forever darting around, passing under, running alongside, crossing through, leaping over swaths of the city. The Périphérique is conditional, relative, flexible. It is forever prepositional. And it is through a series of prepositions that we can understand the ways in which this piece of heavy infrastructure surrenders some of its autonomy to the city it encircles, and in turn, gains a degree of richness and complexity that makes it emphatically someplace, rooted in and responsive to the city it serves. How This Book Works Like the Périphérique itself, this book has a series of entrances and exits but no real beginning or end. I have chosen ten prepositions to illustrate the richness and responsiveness of the Boulevard Périphérique and each one occupies a chapter. They are numbered for the sake of convenience, but the chapters need not be read in order. More prepositions could have been chosen, or others could have been chosen instead. But these seem to me to be the most valuable in revealing the essential and recurring strategies along the Périphérique. Some of these chapters, like over/under or through, deal primarily with formal analysis, while others, like with respect to or on, have a greater emphasis on historical and programmatic issues; in each chapter I define the prepositions as they apply to this analysis. There are, of course, countless other possible interpretations of each of these prepositions one need only consult the dictionary definition of the word to in order to grasp the futility of trying to find a singular definition. But in each case, I have made an effort to go beyond an analysis based solely on the juxtaposition of programs on and around the Périphérique. It is all too easy to look at

large scale elements of infrastructure and to become fascinated by the occasionally brutal and unexpected program adjacencies that tend to spring up, organically, it seems, on and around them. One might thus conclude that the true innovation is the program; that the violent collage of freeway, residential neighborhood, tennis court, shopping mall, and hospital whatever its form -- is somehow illustrative of the richness and limitless freedom of metropolitan life, and that the formal strategy, if one can even speak of a strategy, is either accidental and therefore not worthy of study, or merely superfluous. There is, of course, much that is truly fascinating about the promiscuity of programs on and around elements of infrastructure like the Périphérique, but to ignore the formal specifics that make possible these collages of program is to cut short the investigation just when it begins to enter the terrain of architecture, when it begins to involve columns and beams and the other tools of the architect. If we interpret elements of infrastructure as we would authored works of architecture, we assume nothing has been left to chance. And by understanding the Périphérique as an authored artifact with intentions of its own, we can begin to unearth the specific architectural tactics used to make it what it is, and we will go beyond a naive fixation on program alone.

THROUGH

1.1 > THROUGH DEFINITION Going through depends on having a well-defined background, and then disregarding or transgressing it entirely. In order to go through something, that something must be legible and specific enough--as a figure, a fabric, a texture--to note the incision being made. A river can go through a desert, a nice neighborhood, or a forest, but it cannot go through over there, nearby, or around here. When something passes through, it leaves its surroundings largely intact, but can begin, in subtle and completely obvious ways to change the quality or experience of those surroundings, most frequently through change of scale or materials. Compare with within.

1.2 > THROUGH EPISODE: Parc Des Expositions

1 Original plan for Parc des Expositions, 1925

2 Parc des Expositions, 1925

The continuous ring of fortifications, built in 1840 and largely irrelevant and ineffective for 80 years thereafter, was demolished at the end of the First World War -- a conflict in which it, of course, played no significant part. As the demolition progressed -- and, in fact, well before it had even begun -- architects, planners and utopians imagined a range of uses for the recovered land along Paris s borders. Eugène Hénard proposed a continuous boulevard fronted by elegant apartments and dotted with parks and gardens; Auguste Perret proposed a continuous wall of skyscrapers; The League (neé Society) for Open Spaces, proposed, quite unsurprisingly, a ring of open spaces; and the Urban Hygiene Section of the Musée Social proposed a mix of parks, housing, and sports facilities. The newly available land represented, for some, an opportunity to provide Paris with a lush reservoir of air 1 while others saw it as a means to solve the city s acute housing shortage, or as a potential site for sports and social activities. A relatively modest episode within this flurry of proposals was the scheme for the Parc des expositions, foires, et fêtes de Paris, an immense fairground and complex of trade halls intended primarily for agricultural and industrial expositions. Initially planned for a site near the Bois de Bolougne, it was later shifted to the Bois de Vincennes, and finally to its current site at the Porte de Versailles, on the former bastion 71 on the fortification ring. In 1925, the Parisian architects Viard and Dastugue completed plans for the complex (fig. 1). The architects called for an axial and thoroughly monumental arrangement of the exhibition halls, placing massive, multi-gabled naves along the Boulevard des Marechaux and Rue Ernest Renan (fig. 2, 3). A central, north-south monumental axis bisected these streets with a slight asymmetry, meeting the Porte de Versailles with a formal entrance gate. Further exposition pavilions, gardens and monuments were to flank the gradually sloping axis, terminating in a monumental ensemble and exposition hall. The entire complex had a city-beautiful air of the great international exhibitions of the era, including those held in Paris itself; Viard and Dastugue seem to have understood their project as a permanent successor to these temporary cities; an ideal city of the beaux-arts, yielding only reluctantly to the specifics and irregularities of the site.

Thirty years later, the specifics and irregularities would have their day. The Boulevard Périphérique was begun in 1956, with a five kilometerlong segment of six-lane limited-access expressway running from Porte d Italie to Porte de la Plaine, stopping just short of the Parc des Expositions. A few years later, the inevitable extension of the Périphérique had begun, and the ribbon of expressway was drilled directly through the complex, crossing above the monumental axis at a 30 degree angle, fundamentally breaking the beaux-arts symmetry of the complex (fig. 3). Still, Viard and Dastugue s original order was respected, or at least allowed to go on breathing; the existing buildings were modified rather than destroyed (see section 1.3), and the freeway bisected the complex with such utter indifference that, strangely enough, the Parc des Expositions was able to carry on more or less as before. The absurd superimposition of a totally foreign element think, if you can and are willing, of Steve Martin playing banjo while wearing an arrow through his head does not immediately effect the order or the functioning of the Expo.

c. 1930

c. 1960

Eventually, though, the arrow-through-the-head would begin to undermine the beaux-arts order; as buildings were renovated and replaced, they increasingly avoided contact with the elevated higway, or quite obviously became distorted and squashed in order to sneak discreetly below the roadway (fig. 3). The original beaux-arts order remains strong enough today to pick out the central monumental axis, but the arrow has begun to have an effect on the banjo playing. The local order has been gradually modified by the global order that slices through it.

c. 2000

3 Evolution of Parc des Expositions, 1930-present

GLOBAL SYSTEM: ARROW THROUGH HEAD

LOCAL SYSTEM: PLAYING BANJO

1.3 > THROUGH ZOOM IN When the Périphérique was drilled through the Expo, the existing buildings were altered to allow the roadway to pass directly above the exposition halls (see above). The buildings had an immediately apparent constructive logic, and slicing through the buildings in order to accommodate the roadway created a fundamental disruption of this logic. The early exposition buildings were constructed with a series of parallel gables; the hall was essentially a lamination of many long, skinny buildings. Columns were most likely arrayed in lines along the valleys of the gables it does not appear that trusses were used here, as in later additions and skylights were arranged in bands along the summits. With the addition of the Périphérique, these parallel bands were disrupted, causing dark patches on the interior where the skylight bands were eliminated, and creating a new interior façade of irregularly sliced gables, visible only to traffic on the Périphérique. In the 1990 s, the gabled buildings were replaced with flat-roofed halls that no longer register so graphically the incision made by the roadway.

PORTE MAILLOT

HIPPODROME

PARC DES PRINCES

PARC DES EXPOSITIONS

CITE UNIVERSITAIRE

1.4 > THROUGH ZOOM OUT The Expo at Porte de Versailles is, in fact, one in a series of large-scale elements arranged along the Périphérique between the Seine and Porte de la Plaine. The domed Palais des Sports and extension to the Expo lie across the Rue Renan, with the massive headquarters for the French Air Force, and the Department of the Navy to the west. On the other side of the Périphérique sits Aquaboulevard, an indoor waterpark, with the Heliport of Paris alongside. This node of large-scale elements is itself part of a broad chain of moments of intensity along the Périphérique: Driving along the Périphérique, these elements form a rhythm of events that mark one s passage along the ring; a string of landmarks to be seen at high speeds. See also at.

CLIGNANCOURT

PARC DE LA VILLETTE

BAGNOLET

PORTE DE VINCENNES

BERCY BRIDGE

1.4 > THROUGH SEE ALSO Examples of through can also be found in the corrdior between Porte de Vanves and Porte de Brancion (see ATLAS 09-A8,9), and in the Bois de Vincennes and Bois de Bolougne (see ATLAS 11 and 6). In the Vanves - Brancion corridor, the Périphérique passes through a tight web of existing road and rail connections. Although not nearly as legible a disruption as the Parc des Expositions, this case illustrates how the Périphérique, itself an element of large-scale infrastucture, is forced to navegate its way between other infrastructure elements. More obvious cases of through can be found in the Bois de Vincennes and Bois de Bolougne (see also OVER/UNDER) where the roadway slices through previously existing parkland. During most of its passage through the parks, however, the highway is buried; apparently the natural world of Paris s two primary parks was deemed too important to permit a full-fledged case of through.

BESIDE-BESIDE-BESIDE

2.1> BESIDE-BESIDE-BESIDE DEFINITION One does not arrange items beside-beside-beside one another by accident; things just donÂ&#x2019;t end up that way. If, for some reason, we happen to spot an apple beside a brick beside a candle beside a donut Â&#x2013; and we notice them beside-beside-beside one another repeatedly, we can conclude that these elements are no longer independent and that they have repeatedly (and, in this case, implausibly) ended up beside one another for a reason: there must be a conspiracy. Grouped together and systematically shoved one beside the other, the apple, the brick the candle and the donut have become a new entity, an apple-brick-candle-donut; what might have been dismissed as juxtaposition, episodic closeness, or mere coincidence, here takes on its own nameable and identifiable form. Elements placed beside-beside-beside one another retain their individual characteristics Â&#x2013; the apple does not begin to absorb brick-ness or candlehood simply by being part of the new grouping. Instead, individual elements are transformed into a hybrid-by-proximity, larger and more identifiable than the sum of its individual elements. Compare with next to, with, and, against.

1 Porte de Vanves - Port d Orléans corridor

2.2 > BESIDE-BESIDE-BESIDE EPISODE: Vanves Orléans It is possible to be born, live, die, and be buried within the 400m-wide, 35km-long ring of land on the site of the former Parisian fortifications. In fact, it is possible to do just that in the 2.5 km stretch between Porte de Vanves and Porte de Orléans (fig. 1); here, successive bands of public infrastructure surround Paris on the site of the former fortification walls and demilitarized zone. As the entire fortification wall and its surroundings were dismantled, concentric bands of land were used to fulfill the evolving obligations of the welfare state: subsidized housing, parks, recreation, hospitals, cemeteries, schools, and finally, transportation form a multilayered shell around the entire city. These concentric bands today appear as a self-contained figure, especially between Vanves and Orléans, where the parallel bands of program are so intensely and clearly arranged that they begin to approach the sort of large-scale, easily legible urban texture that Lars Lerup has called megashapes . For Lerup, these megashapes can be forests, clumps of skyscrapers, or even spectacular weather patterns, and he argues that these large, composite elements are the building blocks of the contemporary city, and are therefore more useful for the analysis of the sprawling metropolis than are individual elements like buildings or streets. The banding on the edge of Paris housing beside parks beside schools beside expressway can thus be understood as a megashape, fractured and composite, but coherent as a unified figure nonetheless (fig. 3). A cross-section through the concentric bands reveals not only the rise and fall of fortified Paris, but also the successive attempts to apply a fundamentally therapeutic architecture to the city s edge, as though the maladies of the entire city (congestion, lack of open space, etc.) could somehow be resolved or at least atoned for at the periphery.

2 Subsidized housing (HLM), boulevard Brune

A BOULEVARDS DES MARECHAUX

B HOUSING BLOCKS

C PARK RING

D BOULEVARD PERIPHERIQUE

The innermost layer of concentric rings (A), the Boulevards des Maréchaux, appeared in the 1860s, some 20 years after the construction of the fortification walls. Originally built to facilitate movement of troops and material along the interior of the fortifications, these continuous boulevard was later widened to function as a sort of protopériphérique ring road for automobile traffic. After the demolition of the fortifications in the early 1920s, a ring of high-density social housing was built on the footprint of the walls themselves, (B, fig. 2,) amidst popular demand for a solution to Paris s housing crisis. When they were built, these housing blocks were immediately adjacent to the zone non-aedificandi, a dense and chaotic zone of squatter settlements and factories built illegally in the demilitarized zone outside the fortification walls.

P A R BOULEVARDS DES

HOUSING MARECHAUX

PARK V E R Y

S M A L L

L O C A L

STA D

S T R E E T S

IUM

L OO

BOULEVARD PERIPHERIQUE S U B U R B S

In 1943, the Vichy regime succeeded in doing what democratic rule had been unable to achieve for 20 years, clearing the zone nonaedificandi of the illegal buildings. Shortly thereafter, work began on a second ring (C), this one composed of mainly of parks and cemeteries with occasional schools, hospitals, and recreation centers throughout. This green ring was separated from the housing blocks by a narrow, 2-lane road, with occasional crossing streets linking inner Paris with the exterior towns. By the mid-1950 s, the Boulevard Circulaire that separated the greenbelt from the suburbs essentially just a wide street had begun to be replaced by the Périphérique as we know it today a limited-access superhighway (D). The banding was now complete; a 30-year-long project, completed in fits and starts, and with hardly any continuity from phase to phase, had encircled Paris with a multilayered ring of side-by-side public works capable of serving the Parisian, quite literally, from cradle to grave.

3 Banding as megaform, after Lerup

WHAT THERE IS.

HOUSING

PARIS

HOSPITAL

MALAKOFF PARK

HOUSING

SCHOOL

SPORTS

MONTROUGE SCHOOL

CEMETERY

WHAT THAT MEANS.

THIS IS NOT PARIS.

PARIS ISN T WELL. THIS OUGHT TO FIX IT.

THIS IS PARIS.

1849

1907

1947

2003

2.3 > BESIDE-BESIDE-BESIDE ZOOM IN

4 Cemetery, park, housing bands

The Montrouge Cemetery occupies a trapezoidal plot in the greenbelt zone, sandwiched between housing blocks and the Périphérique. Established on the outskirts of Paris in 1833, before the fortifications had been built, the cemetery was later separated from the city by the fortified walls. During the planning of the greenbelt zone, it was seamlessly integrated into the band of parks and sports facilities; its geometry was, fortuitously, a perfect fit for the passing of the Périphérique. The cemetery, which had once been an isolated element, is here enveloped by the city. This, in itself would not be notable; previously rural elements are frequently overtaken by urban sprawl. Here, however, the pre-existing element is made to fit within the growing city; the cemetery is reframed as part of the band of green space (fig. 4), the only clue that it was not conceived alongside the soccer stadiums and gardens surrounding it are the dates on the ornate granite grave markers.

E OU ST.-

LIE

IL ERV

B -AU LLE

APE

RES

NIÈ

AS OT-

L AIL

RT OU

IG -CL

SSY -PA

D OU

CL ST.-

CIO

E N-D

INE

PLA

LÉA

-OR

ES NV

2.4 > BESIDE-BESIDE-BESIDE ZOOM OUT The Vanves-Orléans corridor is just one segment of a system that envelops nearly the whole of Paris. The same parallel banding of program found here can also be found from Porte Brancion to Porte de la Plaine; Porte de St.-Cloud to Porte de Passy; Porte Maillot to Porte d Asnières; Porte de St-Ouen to Porte de Clignancourt; Porte de la Chapelle to Porte d Aubervilliers; and from Porte de Pantin to Bercy. The recurring banding of elements along the Périphérique serves as a sort of orientation device the territories along the edge of Paris are unified by the blocks of brick housing, the linear parks, and the constant rumbling of the freeway. These bands form an unlikely monument, or at least, a very un-Parisian monument; casual and apparently haphazard. But in its scale and ambition these concentric rings are far more ambitious than any of the grands projets that dot the city.

Y RC

-BE

TIN

PAN

HOUSING

CEMETERY

GENTILLY

SPORTS

2.5 > BESIDE-BESIDE-BESIDE SEE ALSO While the beside-beside-beside arrangement remains more or less consistent throughout the Périphérique, there are a few moments of distortion, primarily where topography or the geometry of the original fortifications creates a deformation in the otherwise linear system, as at Square de la Butte du Chapeau Rouge or at Porte de Champerret. Other deformations occur when large-scale elements are introduced into the well-defined bands, as at the Sébastien Charléty Stadium, where a soccer stadium invades part of the band normally assigned to housing. Here, the elements remain beside-beside-beside one another, though their position is slightly distorted to accommodate the stadium.

OVER/UNDER

3.1 > OVER/UNDER DEFINITION When the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog, the dog (lazy as it was) had done very little to earn its under-ness. The agency here belongs to the fox (whose jumping had earned him a triumphant moment of overness), not to the dog. Without using the passive voice, it is impossible to write a sentence that gives agency to the dog in this situation (The lazy dog was jumped over by the quick brown fox); the foxÂ&#x2019;s over creates a reflective, and therefore passive state of under for the lazy dog. Left to its own devices, the lazy dog would not be under, at all. Individually, over and under only allow one condition to be active; a bridge crosses over a body of water, which is as a result rendered under; a tunnel can go under a body of water, which is as a result rendered over. The composite over/under, however, describes a situation in which both parties are active, mutually creating over and under simultaneously. If, as the quick fox jumped (but not quite high enough to pass over a stationary dog), the not-so-lazy dog began to burrow into the ground (but not quite deep enough to scurry under a stationary fox), then the two animals would be, at last, over/under one another. Compare with despite and notwithstanding.

c. 1939

c. 1958

3.2 > OVER/UNDER EPISODE: Covering, Recovering Within the fixed boundary of central Paris, land use is a zero-sum game there is only so much territory to go around. Building more housing, more offices, or more public buildings will necessarily mean sacrificing something else. And in Paris, this most frequently means sacrificing parkland. A 1975 study by Bernard Lafay, former president of Paris s Municipal Council, concluded that Paris provided less green space than any city in the world; while Washington D.C. had 50 square meters of parkland per inhabitant, Vienna 25, Rome and London 9, Paris had only 1.4 meters for each inhabitant.1

c. 2000

With this situation in mind, Parisian planners in the 1950 s had finally hoped to achieve their dream of an uninterrupted greenbelt on the zone non-aedificandi, the reclaimed demilitarized zone that had surrounded the fortification ring (see chapter 1.1). But just as pressure for subsidized housing in the 1920 s had led the city to replace the fortifications with a dense band of housing blocks, in 1953, the continuing housing crisis led city officials to require that some of the zone be used for housing as well. This time, however, there was a catch. Planners now understood the zero-sum game, and were determined not to let parkland once again be the loser. Housing would be allowed in the greenbelt, but only on 20 percent of the available land. And for every square meter of parkland on the zone given over to housing, an equal amount of parkland would have to be created within the center of Paris, most likely within the îlots insalubres, districts of Paris deemed unhygienic and designated for redevelopment.

1 Evolution, housing at Porte des Lilas

But no official policy of compensation existed for the Boulevard Périphérique, which would also pass through the greenbelt and would consume a swath of 138 hectares, roughly five times more than the amount of land to be dedicated to housing. Much of the roadway was to remain at grade, or elevated, effectively eliminating large parcels of designated parkland. Other parts of the Périphérique were to be buried, primarily those which passed below the existing Bois de Vincennes (fig. 2) and Bois de Bolougne. Here, the highway was hidden beneath an existing order, made to disappear briefly so that Paris s primary green spaces (and upper-class residential neighborhoods) would not be bisected by eight lanes of expressway traffic. At various other points along the Périphérique, however, the highway was depressed below-grade, and punctually covered over with a swath of recovered green space; what had previously been a zone of Parisian favelas and factories was here replaced by a combination of infrastructure and viaduct/park; this was a new element, created by simultaneously digging under and bridging over. These points of covering and recovering were most frequently associated with housing built as part of the 1953 agreement, as at the complex at Porte des Lilas (see ch. 3.3), where the constructive logic of the viaduct a concrete deck supported on columns placed in the median strip -- is applied to a small park created on the site of a former squatter settlement (fig. 1). It is difficult to romanticize these small parks as bastions of the natural, like the Bois de Vincennes and Bois de Bolougne; these are clearly synthetic green spaces, elements of infrastructure, like sewers and electricity, providing a necessary civic utility in the most efficient form possible.

2 Passage of Périphérique at Bois de Vincennes

1958

3.3 > OVER/UNDER ZOOM IN When they were completed in the late 1950 s, the four housing blocks built in and around the trapezoidal plot just south of Porte des Lilas were still surrounded by the provisional settlements illegally built in the zone non-aedificandi; though much of the zone had been cleared by the Vichy government, this piece remained populated with shacks and industrial blocks. Shortly thereafter, the Périphérique was run through the corridor, and the illegal settlements erased once and for all (fig.1). These four tower blocks, each between 11 and 14 stories, and arrayed in parallel bands at a 45 degree angle to the earlier dense ring of housing along the Boulevard des Maréchaux (see ch. 2.2), seem to have been arranged to allow the highway which had already been planned at the time these blocks were finished -- to pass below them; their staggered formation allowed a clear path below, and the expressway would at no point be forced to touch the foundations of the housing blocks.

2003

With the construction of the Périphérique below grade, the local streets Rue Frapie and Rue Noisy-le-Sec were allowed to cross over, connecting Paris to neighboring Bagnolet, where Rue Noisy-leSec becomes an important artery. The trapezoidal plot that remained was later filled in, a found piece of land between viaducts became a park, complete with curving picturesque pathways and a central circular plaza, a moment of over only made possible by the simultaneous passing under of the Périphérique.

RTE

S IER

ILL

ERV

UB EA

Y AFA

DIN

JAR

RTE

CL PAR INE

RTE

LAS

LILY

RTE

RTE PO

RTE

D OU

RTE

L T.-C ES

COVERED BELOW GRADE ELEVATED

3.4 > OVER/UNDER ZOOM OUT Besides the extensive tunnels beneath the Bois de Bolougne and a more limited set beneath the Bois de Vincennes, moments of over/under can be found at several points along the Périphérique: Parc de Bernard Lafay, Jardin Balagny, Stade Paul Faber, Porte Maillot, Stade Jean-Bouin, and Parc des Princes. It should come as no surprise that most of these episodes occur in the 16th and 17th arrondissements, on Paris s eastern edge, one of the most exclusive upper-class neighborhoods. Here, the Périphérique is submerged and largely covered over with parkland, while in the working-class north of Paris, in the 18th arrondissement, the highway is elevated and unmistakably present.

INC

D OIS

INC

V DE

NTR

RI SP

S ILA

E ED

IN OU

-B EAN

CD PAR

UG LO

IS D

D STA

UP DA

O EB

ILL

E HIN

IS RVA

-ST-

RE UP

3.5 > OVER/UNDER SEE ALSO At Porte Dauphine an episode of over/under is sliced in half; the counterclockwise or exterior lanes on the Périphérique are submerged and uncovered; the clockwise, interior lanes are covered with a concrete slab, and topped with a lush garden. The slab, supported on a row of columns in the median strip, cantilevers slightly over the innermost lane of counterclockwise traffic. At this moment, the constructive system is exposed, and the artifice involved in suspending a garden over a freeway is made perfectly clear -- this is not at all a question of denying the Périphérique by covering it up with trees and grass. On the contrary, by exposing the edge of the slab, and covering only one half of the highway s width, the garden is revealed to be no more than a thin layer of natural veneer applied above the Périphérique.

NOTWITHSTANDING

4.1 > NOTWITHSTANDING DEFINITION Although notwithstanding looks like resistance, it s really just a constructed obliviousness. Resistance implies the possibility of a counter-attack, but if a phenomenon continues notwithstanding outside influences, there is no need for counter-attack or resistance. If, for example, a spoken conversation continues notwithstanding the noise of a low-flying airplane, this does not mean that the parties involved are shouting at one another. Instead, we can assume that despite the noise, the conversation continues as before even though all parties might well be bothered by the noise of approaching jet engines either because the participants have somehow learned to overcome the noise, or because they are determined to make it appear so. Notwithstanding is not limited to obliviousness on the part of those being affected by the outside influence; the influence itself may adapt, in order to allow notwithstanding to occur. In the above example, newer and quieter jet engines may allow the conversation to continue. In this case, notwithstanding would be constructed in part by the people involved in the conversation, and in part by the jet engines themselves. Compare with through, despite, against.

Boulevard Périphérique

original cemetery plot cemetery expansion

1 Cimetière des Batignolles

4.2 > NOTWITHSTANDING EPISODE: Cimetière des Batignolles The Parisians no longer bury their dead in catacombs. Since the 1780s, when the ambitious underground catacomb network was established in Paris, city authorities have considered the accommodation of gravesites to be in large part a question of hygiene and have therefore tried to distance the presumably unclean burial grounds from the city center. As the catacomb system was filled to capacity in the 1830s, city leaders began to establish cemeteries along the periphery. Like the French themselves, these new cemeteries were neither entirely Latin, nor quite Nordic. That is, these cemeteries combined a tightly packed urban (read: Latin) structure of grave markers with something of the romantic, picturesque (read: Nordic) arrangement of graves in a park-like setting. Established in 1833 as part of the network of suburban cemeteries (see also 2.3), the Cimetière Parisien des Batignolles still promises something of a remove from the city that now envelopes it; although we no longer share the hygienic concerns that drove the development of cemeteries far from population centers, we still somehow expect the cemetery to provide an oasis of calm. We expect the bucolic, and it is therefore quite unsettling to watch six lanes of périphérique traffic rumble directly overhead. Remarkably, though, the cemetery is scarcely affected by the passage of the roadway above: the ordering of the grave markers and pathways is uninterrupted and one continues to experience the cemetery as a space fundamentally alien to the city in which it is embedded, although in this case, a piece of that city briefly reaches over the cemetery walls. The well-defined composition of the cemetery itself allows it function largely as before, notwithstanding the looming presence of the périphérique. The cemetery s essential order was set when the earliest portion of the graveyard was established in Clichy, with a rectangular plot along what is today the Boulevard Victor Hugo (see facing page).

This rectangular parcel, which currently forms the appendage on the northwest edge of the cemetery, was subdivided into four quadrants by a grid of internal pathways. As the cemetery expanded to the south and west, the original grid was extended into the new additions and modified slightly (fig. 1) to conform to the geometry as new parcels were added. When the périphérique was planned, it became apparent that the roadway would need to pass directly through the cemetery grounds, cutting off the original rectangular parcel from the rest of the cemetery to the south, skirting the entire northern edge tomato, 110.. Though planners of the périphérique had been extremely successful in expropriating land to build all along their desired pathway, the individual burial plots at Batignolles were privately owned, and could not be taken easily. So the périphérique adapted, allowing the cemetery to continue largely undisturbed. The roadway was elevated on piloti (see 4.3), forcing the relocation of only six graves. In the most practical sense, then, Batignolles cemetery was practically undisturbed by the massive and massively intrusive introduction of the périphérique: the network of pathways was not altered, and only six unlucky families were forced to move their ancestors bodies. But it is impossible to miss the impact of the roadway. A large segment of the cemetery has effectively been roofed over, placed beneath an overpass, and the noise of cars and cargo trucks passing overhead is difficult to ignore. Yet this intrusion seems to be just another of the external pressures placed on the cemetery as the city grows around it, only slightly more obnoxious than the neighboring billboards and apartment blocks. Thanks in part to the périphérique s (relatively) good behavior, Batignolles cemetery is able to carry on, in a strangely hybrid yet indifferent form, notwithstanding the changed city outside, and inside, its gates.

1849

1907

1947

2003

THE CITY IS SOMEWHERE OUT HERE.

THIS IS UNLIKE THE CITY.

2 What Cemeteries Want: Clear remove between themselves and city

HOUSING

THE CITY IS RIGHT HERE. VERY LOUD TRUCKS

ADVERTISING

INFRASTRUCTURE

NEIGHBORS

THIS IS TRYING TO IGNORE THE CITY.

3 What Cemeteries Can Tolerate: No remove between themselves and city

4.3 > NOTWITHSTANDING ZOOM IN The périphérique treads strategically, if not particularly lightly, through the Batignolles cemetery touching ground only at eight points where the pi-shaped concrete piloti disrupt the grid of grave markers and pathways (fig. 4,5). This section of the périphérique was constructed with prefabricated slabs; piloti are placed at the joints between slabs. Although the geometry of the périphérique, which crosses the cemetery at an angle oblique to the ordering of the internal pathways and gravestones, is completely independent of the cemetery s internal organization, a combination of astute planning and dumb luck allows these piloti to make only minimal interruptions. Below the périphérique, a particularly ambitious tomb features an ornate cross elevated at least 20 feet and placed atop what appears to be a small temple (fig. 6). The same fortune that must have smiled on this person when he or she lived seems to have continued in the afterlife: the elevated cross narrowly avoids the périphérique slab above, falling directly in between two concrete beams.

LA CHAPELLE BATIGNOLLES

CLICHY

ST.-MANDE

VALMY MONTROUGE

GENTILLY

4.4 > NOTWITHSTANDING ZOOM OUT Batignolles is the only cemetery that skirts below the périphérique, but it is part of a system of burial grounds on the edge of Paris. These plots of land, once safely outside the city walls, have survived the successive waves of development and redevelopment, and are now largely part of the side-by-side-by-side (see ch. 2) formation of city services that runs parallel to the périphérique. This loop of cemeteries is composed of the Cimetière des Batignolles, Cimetière de Clichy, Cimetière de Montrouge, Cimetière de Gentilly, Cimetière Sud de St.-Mandé, Cimetière de Valmy, and the Cimetière Parisien de la Chapelle.

5.1 > AT DEFINITION At abhors generalities. At depends on arriving at something specific, a landmark or other event that makes one position clearly different from the general texture of the city. I ll meet you at the Place des Vosges is an effective set of directions; I ll meet you at the 4th arrondissement or I ll meet you at Paris, is not. At is always different from its immediate surroundings, either in scale, materials, use, or symbolic memory; an otherwise nondescript tree can, if surrounded by a mythology of its specialness, become at. Compare with on.

1 Bagnolet

2 University Church

3 Porte de Vanves

5.2 > AT EPISODE: A Chain of Arrivals The périphérique is a ring; it has no beginning or end, no ceremonial origin or monumental conclusion. It doesn t really connect anything to anything else, and there are no postcards available (as far as the author is aware) with images of either the expressway or the buildings alongside it. Yet it is possible to understand the périphérique as a monumental processional route, a chain of landmarks and important spaces linked one to the other, and then folded back upon itself. It is, in a sense, a neglected sibling of the voie triumphale, the axis that begins at the Louvre, extends through the Tuileries and Place de la Concorde, along the Champs-Elysées, under the Arc de Triomphe, past Porte Maillot, leaving Paris proper and continuing along the Avenue Charles de Gaulle, crossing the Seine, acting as the central spine of the tower complex at La Defense, and terminating (for the moment) in the mercifully but ever-so-slightly-off-axis Grande Arche. The collection of monuments that dots the endless processional loop of the périphérique is more mundane. There are no glass pyramids or obelisks here. But the series of office towers, billboards, stadiums, churches, tunnels and parks nevertheless forms a chain of landmarks and abrupt changes in scale, marking key points along the 35km stretch of otherwise conventional freeway. And it is precisely this chain of elements that makes the périphérique unconventional: these points of

intensity firmly anchor the périphérique, a global system connected to national and international networks of homogenous expressways, to the local specifics of Paris. Elements of large-scale infrastructure like the périphérique are frequently relegated to the world of the nonplace, the anonymous and globally identical network of airports, expressways and chain motels. see marc augé. The périphérique, however, manages to be very much someplace; the chain of elements along the highway may not be among Paris s most iconic, but they are born of the logic of the city itself, they are specific. And the combination of the otherwise generic element of highway infrastructure with highly specific moments of contact with the city, make the périphérique at once part of the global and local orders. It is impossible to say where the périphérique begins, but for the sake of this brief tour at 100 kmh, we will enter in the north of Paris, at the Porte de la Chapelle one of the six interchanges linking the périphérique with the larger French and European highway networks. As we merge onto the interior périphérique, traveling clockwise, we see ahead of us on our left the first in the chain of monuments: the Pariféric Tower, a 40-story postmodern office block, topped by a massive billboard Daewoo billboard. The tower s name, a contraction of Paris and périphérique marks an admittedly inelegant fusion of Paris with its infrastructure. Further along, we make a sharp right hand turn,

4 Parc des Princes

5 Bois de Boulogne

cross the Canal de l Ourcq, and pass the Holiday Inn billboard at the Cité de la Musique. The roadway gradually dips below grade, and we pass through a brief tunnel at Porte des Lilas (see ch. 3.3). Emerging from the tunnel, we see in the distance the twin mirrored towers of the Bagnolet complex (fig. 1, see ch. 9) before passing through the nest of off-and-on ramps that surround the complex itself. We next approach the symmetrically arranged housing towers at the Porte de Vincennes. These towers also mark the end of an axis that begins in the Place de la Concorde, running down the Rue de Rivoli, through the Place de la Bastille and Place de la Nation. We turn to the left and pass through three tunnels, their openings draped with green, signaling the Bois de Vincennes, before ascending slightly to cross the massive Bercy railyards and ascending again to pass over the twin-masted bridge over the Seine. On the other bank of the river, we pass another large railyard and gradually descend below grade. A number of local streets pass above us, and the towers of the redevelopment in the 13th arrondissement appear off to the right. We curve sharply to the right, then back to the left, passing the Gentilly cemetery and the Charléty stadium beyond (see ch. 2.5). The belltower of the Cité Universitaire appears ahead and to the eft (fig. 2);

6 Porte Maillot

lpassing it, we jog to the right, and drop below grade. Again, local streets pass overhead, and after passing below a rail crossing and billboard (fig. 3), we turn right and climb, passing directly through the Parc des Expositions (see ch. 1). After crossing the Seine again, we quickly duck into a tunnel and make a sharp turn to the right. The concrete-ribbed Parc des Princes soccer stadium appears ahead (fig. 4, see ch. 5.3), and we pass directly below it, entering a series of long tunnels that briefly open, giving us fleeting glances at the Bois de Boulogne (fig. 5). Soon, the tower at Porte Maillot appears ahead and to the right (fig. 4), and passing it, we again duck into a blur of tunnels, and then climb towards a giant Pentax billboard as we gradually turn right. The highway is elevated here, and we pass through a canyon of apartment blocks, each with a neon-lit billboard perched on the roof. We again pass over a railyard, and arrive where we began: the dense web of expressway ramps at Porte de la Chapelle. This high-speed procession around the border of Paris is thus a series of arrivals, a chain of distinct and specific elements that keeps the non-place firmly grounded in its local surroundings. To call the périphérique anonymous or anti-urban is to miss the way that it, like the voie triumphale, traces a carefully choreographed line through, or in this case around, the city.

7 An entirely subjective but nonetheless instructive graph of comparative visual and iconographic intensity along the Voie Triumphale and the Périphérique

CHAMPS ELYSEES

VISUAL/ICONOGRAPHIC INTENSITY

ARC DE TRIOMPHE KM 4.1

PARIFERIQUE TOWER KM 2.1

GRANDE ARCHE DE LA DEFENSE KM 8.5

BAGNOLET TOWERS KM 7.1

PORTE MAILLOT KM 5.3

BERCY BRIDGE KM 12.5

ROND PONT DASSAULT KM 2.7

! !

0 KM

LOUVRE AND PYRAMID KM .12

OBELISQUE KM 1.4

BOIS DE VINCENNES

ESPLANADE DE LA DEFENSE

SEINE CROSSING KM 7.4

LILAS TUNNEL KM 6.3

PORTE DE VINCENNES KM 9.3

CHARLETY STADIUM KM 16.9

CANAL CROSSING KM 2.9

5 KM

8.5 KM

10 KM

15 KM

PERIPHERIQUE VOIE TRIUMPHALE

EVENT

BOIS DE VINCENNES

PARC DES PRINCES STADIUM KM 24.8

! ! !

PORTE MAILLOT TOWER KM 29.8

PARC DES EXPOSITIONS KM 21.7

SEINE CROSSING KM 21.7

CLIGNANCOURT CANYON KM 33.2-33.5

TUNNELS KM 30.1-32

CITE UNIVERSITAIRE KM 17.4

20 KM

25 KM

30 KM

35 KM

Boulgone-Billancourt

Paris - 16e Arrondissement

8 Parc des Princes

5.3 > AT ZOOM IN The Parc des Princes soccer stadium provides one of the most dramatic moments of arrival in the entire périphérique loop; traveling clockwise on the ring-road, we emerge from a series of short tunnels to confront the stadium head-on, passing directly below the stadium s northwest corner. Designed by Roger Tallibert and completed in 1972, the current Parc des Princes is the third stadium to be built on the site. The first installation, a velodrome with seating for 20,000 people, was built in the demilitarized zone non-aedificandi in 1897. In order to accommodate the length of the stadium within the fixed width of the zone, the velodrome was oriented diagonally, an arrangement which persists today (fig. 8-10). A second, larger stadium was built on the site in 1931, and was replaced 40 years later. Experienced from the passing car, this episode has the perspectival drama of a sequence of picturesque landscape: the stadium is oriented on the oblique with respect to the périphérique , which itself curves gradually to the left as it approaches. The series of concrete ribs elevates slightly along the façade that faces the périphérique, rising to accommodate the grandstands along the sidelines, which are higher than those behind the goals. These asymmetries make the perspective from the passing car exceptionally intense; drivers have no more than a few seconds to process this view, and the dynamism of the elements plus the abrupt passage from tunnel to daylight, to tunnel again, creates a truly iconic moment along the périphérique.

9 Parc des Princes, c. 1933

10 Parc des Princes, c. 1975

SOCCER SPORTS CENTER TENNIS SWIMMING

5.4 > AT ZOOM OUT After a day or two spent touring the incredibly extensive chain of stadiums and sports facilities along the périphérique, one might arrive at the decidedly debatable conclusion that the French must be the most fitness-crazed people on the planet. Within the belt there are at least 33 soccer stadiums, of all sizes; 22 sports centers; 31 tennis complexes and 6 swimming centers. This emphasis on fitness can be traced to the movement begun in the late 19th century by social reformers like the Musée Social, who called for a ring of parks and sporting facilities on the site of the decommissioned fortifications. More broadly, these facilities can be understood as part of the idea of the périphérique -as-therapy (see ch. 2.2); the Parisian edge was in some way expected to cure or atone for the sins of congestion, pollution, and as one might assume from the predominance of sports facilities along the périphérique, gluttony, committed in the city center.

5.5 > AT SEE ALSO The pĂŠriphĂŠrique only skirts the Bois de Vincennes and the Bois de Bolougne, yet the dramatic sequence of tunnels and brief glimpses of lawns and dense clumps of trees provides a firm announcement of arrival. The passing views create a sort of fleeting advertisement for nature, another in a series of large billboards oriented to the roadway.

WITH OVER/UNDER RESPECT TO

6.1 > WITH RESPECT TO DEFINITION The theory of relativity, the vast majority of junior high pseudo-philosophy, and whole of the Matrix trilogy rely on with respect to. With respect to is the idea that objects, appear differently when they are viewed either from different positions or in different contexts. Implicit in with respect to is the idea that there is no absolute state of being only different interpretations based on context. When we say that a person measuring 6 6 is tall, we really mean that he or she is tall with respect to the average human height. A sequoia, operating in a different frame of reference, would likely have a different opinion. Compare with despite.

1 Paris-as-solid-core; Henri Proust plan, 1934

2 Paris-as-central-void; Paul Delouvrier, 1969

6.2 > WITH RESPECT TO EPISODE: Heart of Darkness They discovered that many Parisians saw the suburbs as a shapeless muddle, a desert containing 10 million inhabitants, a series of indistinct gray buildings: a circular purgatory with Paris in the middle. The suburbs were something all around . A wasteland Paris had become a business hypermarket, a cultural Disneyland. Where had the life gone? To the suburbs. All around could not therefore be a wasteland, but a land full of people and life. Real people and real life. The only wasting souls they knew were those they saw and felt on their city s every corner. And if Paris had emptied, if it was no more than a ghost town, didn t it mean that the true center was now all around ? François Maspero, Roissy Express, 1989 1 Paris is either the hard, dense core at the center of a vast, indistinct metropolitan region, or it is little more than the eye of the storm -- an empty, largely symbolic space around which the modern metropolis revolves. It all depends how you look at it. And when you look at it with the périphérique foremost in your mind, it is impossible not to entertain, at least briefly, the idea that Paris, museum-piece and idealized heart of France, is today more accurately described by the city of more than 10 million living outside the périphérique than the city of 2 million living within it. Understood with respect to metropolitan Paris, then, the Périphérique is not the modern-day fortification wall that some have made it out to be a barrier that keeps the sacred core (and the Sacré Coeur) safe from contamination by the profane exterior but rather the innermost edge of modern Paris. The Périphérique is the hub joining the spokes of an expressway system that links the villes nouvelles (planned as the périphérique itself was under construction in the 1960s), the pre-existing villages, now enveloped by suburbia and expanded, and the rest of France and Europe beyond. Clearly, the

system of hub and spokes is in part meant to once again enhance the importance of central Paris each of the Villes Nouvelles is linked to, and in some way remains dependent on, the Paris proper within the périphérique ring. Yet the périphérique bypasses central Paris entirely, making it possible to drive from St.-Quentin-En-Yvelines (pop. 142,000) in the southwest to Marne-la-Vallée (pop. 246,000) in the northeast without once entering the arrondissement of central Paris. The network of metropolitan and regional expressways is thus centered not the city of Paris itself, but the on the périphérique ring that surrounds it. And like the infrastructure that serves it, the modern city that has grown (planned and unplanned) in the Parisian suburbs is increasingly independent of the symbolic center. If graphic language matters, and we architects are virtually required to admit that it does, we can look to the drawings produced as part of Paris s various regional plans to trace the evolution of how central Paris has been understood with respect to its periphery. That is, we can see how Paris-as-solid-core (fig. 1) becomes Paris-as-central-void (fig. 2). The first comprehensive plan for the Paris region was born on a Sunday in 1928, when French president Raymond Poincaré was returning to Paris after having spent the weekend at his country house. A traffic accident forced the president s car to make a detour through a squalid suburban zone to the east of the city, one without paved roads, electricity, running water, or sewage. The president was predictably scandalized by the living conditions on Paris s edge, and ordered the creation of a planning commission for the entire urban region.2 According Interior Minister Albert Sarraut, this commission would first need to define the limits of the Parisian region, noting that it would be necessary to trace around Paris a line, inside of which certain things permitted elsewhere will be forbidden. 3 Greater Paris would thus be domesticated, made more like the capital itself. Directed by Henri Prost, head government architect, the Plan

3 Métropoles d equilibre

d Aménagement de la Région Parisienne was begun in 1932, and completed two years later. The plan called for greater central control of land-use in the region, proposing a network of regional parks and arterial railways and expressways, radiating from the dense central core. Although the plan was almost exclusively dedicated to the planning of the Parisian region and not to the central core itself, the most emblematic drawing (fig. 1) nevertheless represents the city center as a dense, black mark in the center of the composition. Patches of black and gray escape from the central node, and radial highways extend off the page toward the major cities of Europe, but it is clear that Paris proper remains the center of this universe. So dominant was Paris with respect to the rest of France that many began to worry that it had created an unhealthy centralization of power and resources in just one city, stunting the growth of other regions and cities. In 1861, 7.5 percent of the French population lived in the capital city. By 1946, this figure had more than doubled. Ibid. Postwar planning efforts thus attempted to favor the rest of France at the expense of Paris, directing money to other regions, and placing limits on new construction in the capital. The most ambitious element of the decentralist movement was the creation of eight métropoles d equilibre, new urban centers created by linking existing provincial cities far from Paris. These new composite cities form a map of France (fig. 3) in which Paris is just one in a series of amorphous blotches Here, Paris might form a slightly larger blotch, perhaps, but it is no longer the dominant pole represented in the Prost drawing. The Parisians were hardly enthusiastic about the state s efforts to reduce the importance of the capital. And the government itself began to realize that such a scheme was unrealistic, and in fact harmful to the international image of France itself, an image largely based on the prestige and singularity of Paris.4 In 1963, Paris planning chief Paul

4 Villes Nouvelles and RER suburban rail

Delouvrier issued a report accepting and embracing the growth of Paris, arguing that the city should grow in a logical and rigorously planned fashion. In 1965, Delouvrier issued the Schéma Directeur d Aménagement et d Urbansime de la Région de Paris, a plan which called for the creation of a series of villes nouvelles, or new towns, outside the city center. These new towns were unlike the British garden city prototype in that they were based around existing villages, and were intended to be broad new urban regions, rather than independent poles. Delouvrier organized the villes nouvelles not in concentric circles as might be expected according to the centralist model of Paris, but along two parallel east-west axes, connected to central Paris with the new RER regional train, and with the network of expressways centered on the périphérique. These five new cities, Cergy-Pontoise, Evry (see p. 54), Marne-la-Vallée, Sénart, and SaintQuentin-en-Yvelines, today have a population of 740,000 roughly a 1/3 of the population of Paris proper. Delouvrier s 1969 plan drawing (fig. 2) describes a dense network of new urbanized zones, and new urban centers arrayed along a grid of trains and expressways that converge on the périphérique. Hatches and gray patches fill the drawing with broad swaths of tone . At the center of this dense drawing is a white void: the old Paris. A series of arrows beginning in the villes nouvelles gesture vaguely toward the center, toward the blank space on the map where the City of Light is rendered as the Heart of Darkness. Paris, of course, remains Paris. The cafes are all full, and the boulevards are still unimpeachably elegant and filled with traffic. But today more tourists travel annually to the ville nouvelle of Marne-la-Vallée to visit Disneyland Paris, than to Paris itself. There is now a city outside Paris. And the boulevard périphérique, if you look at it right, is that city s inner edge.

A13 TO VERSAILLES TO ROUEN TO LE HAVRE

P A

6.3 > WITH RESPECT TO ZOOM IN The Périphérique connects to the broader system of expressways at six points: at Porte de Boulogne, connecting to the A13 northeast to Le Havre; at Porte de la Chapelle, connecting to the A1 north to Lille; at Porte de Bagnolet, connecting to the A3 east to the near suburbs, and beyond, to the A1 and A4 expressways; at Porte de Bercy, connecting to the A4 northeast to Metz, at twice in Gentilly, connecting to the A6 toward Lyon. At these moments, the périphérique functions like a giant traffic rotary at the intersection of a tangle of important streets; Paris is an important node in the French highway system, and the Périphérique collects and distributes the traffic among the various spokes of the wheel. It is worth noting that while the périphérique is well-integrated into the national and continental network of expressways, it is less well-integrated into the local street pattern of Paris. Exit ramps deposit cars directly into city traffic, and major traffic jams are common during rush hour. Please see despite.

A6a

TO ORLY TO RUNGIS TO LYON TO RUNGIS

TO CDG TO LILLE TO BRUSSELS

TO PARIS NORD TO CDG TO LILLE TO BRUSSELS

R I

TO DISNEYLAND TO REIMS TO NANCY TO METZ

A6b TO ORLY TO RUNGIS TO LYON TO RUNGIS

6.4 > WITH RESPECT TO ZOOM OUT The line that separates city from suburb is in large part arbitrary; streets just outside the border are often indistinguishable from those on the inside, and aside from the name that appears on the manhole covers, street signs, and municipal buildings, there is usually little difference between the city proper and the immediate suburbs. Even at greater distances from the city border, as the suburbs grow less dense and more typically suburban , it is still possible to understand the metropolitan region as a whole, of which the city proper is just one part. So,then, is there significance to these arbitrary lines on the map? Aside from the inevitable qualitative differences between city center (which in many cities is composed of once-suburban villages, gradually annexed to the core) and suburban extensions, do urban and suburban , center and periphery really matter in the metropolis? What s the difference? Aside from the obvious formal differences between, say, midtown Manhattan and large swaths of Long Island, the most significant and enduring difference between center and periphery is based on constructed meaning, on mythology. That is, beyond the socioeconomic, political, and urbanistic differences between Manhattan and Long Island, which are important but relatively fluid, there is a constructed meaning of Manhattan, or New York City that marks it as fundamentally different with respect to its surrounding region. These mythologies too are subject to change; the American city proper may be understood as a troubled inner-city (read: non-white), or as a revived (read: gentrifying) center. The American suburb may be understood as the good life or as a site of school shootings and sprawl.

In Paris, like many European cities, the myth of center and periphery is less fluid than in American cities. Paris is the symbolic center of all that is French and cultured. The suburbs are the escape valve, the inevitable, but ultimately undesired means of managing the attractive pull exerted by the central core. Parisian suburbia is thus home to immigrants , (read: non-white, usually non-catholic, and frequently born in France) and is generally considered a problem to be managed, to be overcome and made more like the center. And as Paris itself is already defined, and for the most part, complete, growth can only occur on the periphery. More even than American cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles the population of the Paris region lives outside the symbolic core. Over 81 percent of the population of metropolitan Paris lies outside the périphérique, and the increased growth on the periphery has only served to reinforce the myth of central Paris s specialness; as the metropolitan area grows, an ever smaller (and ever more select) proportion is able to live in the symbolic core.

METROPOLITAN AREA

PERCENT OF POPULATION OUTSIDE POLITICAL BOUNDARY

Paris

81.2%

Los Angeles

77.1

Buenos Aires

75.8

Chicago

72.9

New York

72.8

Barcelona

61.3

Amsterdam

53.1

London

34.2

Moscow

30.7

Paris

1.00 perifs city population: 2 125 000 region population: 11 293 000 percent outside: 81.2

61 33

Barcelona .83 perifs

city population: 1 497 700 region population: 3 871 400 percent outside: 61.3

Buenos Aires .88 perifs

city population: 2 904 000 region population: 12 020 000 percent outside: 75.8

Amsterdam 1.34 perifs

city population: 719 500 region population: 1 536 300 percent outside: 53.1

London 5.48 perifs

city population: 7 393 800 region population: 11 230 500 percent outside: 34.2

63 33

Chicago 7.98 perifs

city population: 2 934 900 region population: 10 894 200 percent outside: 72.9

New York City 10.15 perifs

city population: 8 103 700 region population: 29 881 200 percent outside: 72.8

65 33

Moscow 12.08 perifs

city population: 8 376 000 region population: 12 100 100 percent outside: 30.7

Los Angeles 55.7 perifs

city population: 3 805 400 region population: 16 584 700 percent outside: 77.1

DESPITE

7.1 > DESPITE DEFINITION Despite takes challenges or interruptions into account, adapts, and then carries on -- not as before, but newly equipped (and sometimes improved) in order to continue. As a result, despite can initially appear to be little more than peaceful coexistence or superimposition, but this is only because it is so remarkably well-adjusted. Once an element has entered into despite it may continue to serve the same function as it did before adapting, but its form may mutate given the new circumstances. Compare with notwithstanding.

1 Porte de Montreuil

2 Porte de Vincennes

7.2 > DESPITE EPISODE: Doors of Perception The on and off ramps along the périphérique are not named for the streets they intersect. Nor are they named for the Parisian districts in which they land. Instead, each exit is named after the porte, or, gate to Paris that had previously stood on the site. These portes Porte de Vanves, Porte de Clichy, or Porte d Aubervilliers, for example refer to the nearby towns which could be accessed from the openings in the continuous fortification wall; at these points, tariffs were issued and collected, and entry and exit to the capital was controlled and emphatically marked by passing through a built threshold. Porte literally means door in French, and that is precisely what would greet travelers wishing to enter or exit the city. Beyond the iron gateways themselves, however, few of the portes included any formal gesture to mark the beginning (or end) of the city proper; the portes were for the most part, nothing more than openings in a fortified wall. (fig. 5-7) Although there was little designed emphasis placed on these points of entry, the development of roads to and from Paris would begin to convert the portes into pressure-points of activity; there were only 65 openings in the fortification wall, and of those, only 26 included a formal checkpoint. Traffic thus centered on these nodes, and the portes frequently began to develop into points of convergence for local roads; three or four local and regional streets would all converge at the nearest porte, marking a rather utilitarian entrance to a city loathe to miss an opportunity to build a monument to itself. (fig. 7) Even after the fortification walls were destroyed, the portes remained, albeit only in name. The bottlenecks of roadways remained as well, branches of roadways now converging to a single point in order to pass through nothing in particular. With the walls and gateways demolished, the existing network of roads created points of intensity and convergence where there was no longer any need. (see p. 73) But with the construction of the boulevard périphérique, the portes

5 Porte de Issy, 1906

6 Porte de la Plaisance, 1906

3 porte d aubervilliers

4 porte de pantin

would once again become important nodes within the city, marking points of access to the regional expressway systems, and again serving as pressure-points for access to and from Paris. Like the earlier fortification ring, the périphérique created a territorial barrier between Paris and its hinterland, and it was once again at the portes that local traffic would pass over or under the new separation wall. It is thus possible to understand the portes as points of contact between a local system (roads connecting exterior arrondissements of Paris with the nearby suburbs) and a global network (expressway ring linking Paris to suburbs, France, and Europe); the portes as they exist today (fig. 1-4) might then be seen as moments in which these two systems are overlaid, coexisting, quite literally, on different planes. It could be argued that the portes represent moments at which the local system of streets is able to continue despite the interruption and clash of scaled presented by the périphérique.

7 Porte de Clichy, 1906

This reading, however, ignores the complexity of the situation. The newly formed portes are more than mere continuations of the local street network over and under sections of the périphérique with the addition of traffic exiting and entering the expressway system, the portes were transformed, beginning to take on a formal identity of their own. The new nodes of traffic were expanded to form traffic roundabouts, funneling cars between local streets and the périphérique below. These roundabouts are often surrounded by shopping and apartment towers, in some cases weakly echoing the Hausmann-era traffic circles of central Paris. Granted, this is not a particularly strong formal identity. But these new roundabouts allow the portes themselves to become identifiable points within the city. What had once been nothing more than the point at which a bottleneck of roadways converges to pass through the fortification wall, now carves out a patch of territory for itself. The local system adapted to the change from fortif to perif 1 and in doing so, created a series of new portes with ambitions well beyond the mere connecting of one thing to another. 72

1849

1907

THIS IS UNLIKE THE CITY.

1947

2003

MALL

FLEA MARKET OFFICE BLOCKS

PLACE DE LA PORTE DE MONTREUIL

HOUSING

7.3 > DESPITE ZOOM IN The Porte de Montreuil is located on the eastern edge of Paris, joining the 20th arrondissement with the neighboring town of Montreuil. When the fortification wall was built in the 1840 s, the gateway between the 11th and 12th barricades allowed the Route de Paris à Montreuil (now Rue de Paris) to pass through. This broad, tree-lined road, one of the principal connections with the towns to the east of Paris, ran parallel to the Vieux Chemin de Paris (now Rue Etienne Marcel) which had previously been the main link between the town of Montreuil and the capital. Both roads converged at the Porte de Montreuil, along with the Route de Charonne (now Rue de St.-Mandé) which had been cut off from Paris when the fortification walls were built. By 1907, a fourth roadway joined the bottleneck the wide Avenue du Centenaire (now Avenue Gallieni), which connected the Porte de Montreuil to the town of Bagnolet, immediately to the north. Once the fortifications were dismantled, the band of HLM housing extended to the west of the porte, which now existed in name only. With the physical barrier

itself erased, it no longer seemed necessary to concentrate so many local roads in just one node. But the construction of the périphérique changed everything; the diagonal Avenue Gallieni and Rue St.-Mande were cut off by the roadway, and a band of frontage roads parallel to the expressway linked these streets to the porte. The Porte de Montreuil itself was expanded into an enormous traffic circle suspended over the périphérique, and the empty space with was baptized Place de la Porte de Montreuil . Soon, high-rise office blocks, apartment building, and shopping malls appeared on the Montreuil side of the plaza, clearly oriented more to Paris than to the town of Montreuil itself. On weekends, the shopping malls face added competition: a flea market invades the frontage road to the north and a section of the traffic circle itself. The porte is no longer just a point of entry. The accumulation of programs and traffic flows (which themselves are related) create a strangely vibrant, if overscaled, public space on what had once been little more than a gap in the wall.

PORTE SHOPPING MALL GAS STATION MOTEL

7.4 > DESPITE ZOOM OUT There are today 35 on/off ramps on the périphérique. All but the Quai d Issy and the Quai d Ivry are named for the portes once opened in the fortification wall. Like the commercial zones that appear near the on/off ramps of expressways in American suburbia, the portes have become sites of development for hotels, shopping malls, and gas stations. The paraphernalia of highway culture thus begins to colonize parts of central Paris itself, with 6 shopping malls, 34 gas stations, and 28 hotels along the périphérique ring.

7.5 > DESPITE SEE ALSO Porte de Vincennes has always been slightly different. As it linked Paris with the Palace and military installations at Château de Vincennes, the Avenue de Vincennes passed through the fortification ring with broad, monumental opening, and continued on to what is today Place de la Nation, and eventually into the Voie Triumphale itself. Today, the Porte de Vincennes retains its monumental form: two parallel columns of housing blocks flank the Cours de Vincennes as it approaches the Porte, and a further pair of symmetrical apartment blocks define the entry into Vincennes. Here, the formal monumental ambitions of Paris collide with the almost inadvertent monumentalism of the Boulevard Périphérique, and the resulting scale creates an ensemble that appears more Soviet than Hausmannesque.

8.1 > ON DEFINITION In order to build on you must find something capable of being remembered (preferably relating to either religious, ethnic, or political identity), and then destroy it. Using the site acquired by demolition Â&#x2013; and only the site acquired by demolition Â&#x2013; you must then build something else. Effective instances of on will replace the earlier building with one that houses either a radically opposed program (replacing a factory with a park, for example) or updating the earlier program to reflect or serve new sociopolitical realities. For on to be successful, the original boundaries of the site must remain perceptible after the new construction is complete; the mark of the thing being built on must remain. The ancient Romans were effective users of on, frequently constructing their temples and public buildings on the sites of earlier temples serving local cultures. After the reconquest of Spain, the Catholic monarchy often built their cathedrals on the sites of mosques, which themselves had been built on churches, synagogues, or Visigoth temples. Stalin had hoped to build the Palace of the Soviets on the site of MoscowÂ&#x2019;s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, but was only able to complete the demolition phase; this was an incomplete and therefore unsuccessful instance of on: the church was recently rebuilt. On is inevitably rhetorical. Compare with at. 79

1 Bastion on the fortified ring, 1871

2 Demolition of fortifications at Boulevard Lannes, 1928

8.2 > ON EPISODE: The HBM Ring Built between 1841 and 1845 by the government of Adolphe Thiers, the continuous fortification wall was surrounded in controversy even before it was built. Its proponents claimed that it would keep the capital safe from invasion, providing Paris with a zone that would have the effect that the ocean has for England, or the ice has for Russia, 1. while skeptics argued that such a fortification was unnecessary or would be ineffective. Many suspected that the walls were directed not so much against invaders from abroad, as against the workers within the city itself.2 The skeptics were, for the most part, correct. Only 25 years after its completion, the wall was unable to protect the city during the FrancoPrussian War, as advances in artillery made it possible to launch projectiles over the wall and into the city itself. Just after the war, French government troops easily surmounted the barrier in their efforts to enter the city and destroy the Paris Commune of 1871 the army had little trouble bypassing its own defensive system when the situation demanded it. By the 1880s, plans were already underway to demolish the vast ring and to turn the military zone over to public use. The fortification walls and the roughly 300 meter wide zone non-aedificandi that surrounded it (fig. 1) offered 1200 hectares of potential sites an amount equivalent to 25 percent of the city of Paris itself . This vast linear terrain, which formed the geographic boundary of Paris (fig. 4), became the focus of the ever-formidable utopian and reformist impulse of the city s leadership; here, it seemed, the overcrowding of central Paris could once and for all be controlled. A coalition of Paris s philanthropic organizations the League of Open Spaces, the French Garden City

Club, and the Section d Hygiène du Musée Social proposed that the majority of the fortification zone be converted to parks, while later initiatives suggested that public institutions like schools and hospitals should also be located in the newly recovered band.3 At no time did the Parisian instinct for monumentalism recede entirely; even within the projected band of parks, the 1913 Commission for the Extension of Paris noted that the moment was right to build monuments: An equal opportunity to create grandly and beautifully will perhaps never be presented We have the ability to lay out on the terrain of the fortifications triumphal entrances, grandiose portals, which will immediately announce the universal city, the capital of the artistic world. 4 Commissions were formed. Competitions were held. Heated debates ensued. Yet the actual acquisition and dismantling of the fortification walls and the zone non-aedificandi would take decades. By 1932, only the walls had been demolished (fig. 2), and the newly cleared zone was not developed according to any of the proposed schemes. Some sites were assigned to institutional use. Some were sold to speculators. But the largest swath of the fortification zone was filled in with low and moderate income housing (Habitations à Bon Marché, or HBM); nearly 40,000 units were built by 1938. Over 120,000 residents now occupied the former fortification zone. The brick apartment blocks formed a new wall around the city a high-density housing ring that in large part maintained the linear structure of the fortification system, converting the armed barrier into a dense 8 story wall of housing blocks. Le Corbusier was not amused. His Porte Molitor apartment lie just

3 Housing blocks under construction, Menilmontant; 1931

opposite the fortifications near the Bois de Boulogne, and in order torder to enter the city from his home, he had to pass directly through the dense housing ring. Profit prevailed, he complained. Nothing, absolutely nothing was done in the public interest. No kind of advance for architecture, no kind of advance for city planning. This is a wasted adventure, but no one protests! (fig. 3)5 It is difficult to maintain this sort of indignation. Today the HBM blocks appear harsh and unimaginative, (fig. 5) but relatively humane when compared to the massive housing projects developed in the Parisian suburbs after the Second World War. And for better or worse, these dense blocks have made it impossible to erase entirely the mark of a stone and concrete barrier that even 70 years after its destruction continues to separate the Parisian from the non-Parisian, the center from the periphery. The HBM ring was built on the fortifications, and the mark the fortification wall had made on the Parisian landscape was preserved, perhaps accentuated, precisely by erasing it and replacing it with something new.

4 Paris and its fortifications, 1860

5 HBM blocks, Boulevard Mortier, 2003

ZONE NON-AEDIFICANDI

PARIS

BAGNOLET

FORTIFICATIONS

8.3 > ON ZOOM IN The band of housing blocks between Porte de Vanves and Porte dÂ&#x2019;Orleans is one of the most dense patches in the entire housing ring. This development, one of the first completed as part of the re-use of the fortifications, includes 80 separate housing blocks, most of them seven stories tall. The blocks recall the mansard-roofed houses along the redeveloped Haussmann boulevards of the city center, here stripped of ornamental detail and stretched two or three additional stories.

BOULEVARD BRUNE

4 Controlled entries, Boulevard Brune HBM housing blocks

8.3 > ON ZOOM IN While the original Haussmann blocks had lined broad boulevards, however, these blocks are placed tightly, one against the other, along the Boulevard Brune. And although the buildings largely face the street, the entire complex is fundamentally closed to the city -- entrances are placed on internal, gated courtyards, separated from the street; all those who enter must pass a central control post for each group of apartment blocks. In its materiality and massing, the complex is clearly set apart from the city. The fundamentally anti-urban access strategy makes this difference even clearer.

PO PO

RTE

D A SN

RTE

IER

CLI

RS LIE VIL BER AU D RTE PO

TE OR

ILL

RTE

IS RVA

-ST-

RTE

RE UP

TE OR

S ILA

P LA

ETT E

RTE

E EIN

RTE

CIO

LE OR

D TE OR

E ED

LLY NTI

HOUSING BANDS ALONG PERIPHERIQUE

8.4 > ON ZOOM OUT In all, there are nearly 500 housing blocks constructed between 1932 and 1938. These bands can be found between Porte Brancion and Porte d Orleans; Porte de Gentilly and Porte d Ivry; Porte Dorée and Porte des Lilas; Porte du Pré-St.-Gervais and Porte de Pantin; Porte d Auberviliers and Porte de Clichy; Porte d Asnières and Porte Maillot and Porte de la Muette and the Seine. The groups of housing blocks were built at different times, by different contractors, and were designed by different architects. Yet the consistent scale with the exception of the luxury blocks along the Bois de Boulogne, the blocks always seem to be slightly too large for the site and the common use of brick and an abstracted Second Empire vocabulary create a shared identity for the complex, an identity that appears, disappears, then reappears along the length along the Périphérique.

TIN

PAN

RTE

D IV

R DO

8.5 > ON SEE ALSO While the vast majority of the housing built on the site of the fortifications was for middle and low income groups, the band of housing along the Bois de Boulogne was intended for a distinctly upper-class market. An advertisement published by in 1930 sets the scene: The City of Paris offers you some pearls from its case, putting up for sale on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, that is to say, in front of the most beautiful promenade in the world, building sites made available by the removal of the fortified ring. cohen, 181 These lots were sold to individuals, who would then build their own homes according to the taste of the buyer. Along the park, then, sits a row of elegantly proportioned, fourstory pavilions, all slightly different, but all in an abstracted classical or Second Empire vocabulary as determined by the owner s whim. Like the boulevard périphérique itself, which adapts to the wealthy neighborhoods of western Paris by burrowing out of sight, the 1930 s housing band adapts as well, transforming itself from a band of dense brick apartments, into a stately row of classical pavilions arrayed along the park s eastern edge.

WITH

9.1 > WITH DEFINITION With is more than the sum of its parts, and it is also more than just more than the sum of its parts. With occurs when elements are carefully and intentionally mixed, producing a new compound that transcends the original ingredients. A simple operation of addition can be expressed with the formula: A+B=C. Here, we assume not only that C represents the mathematical sum of A and B, but also that it belongs to the same family as the elements being added together. That is, if A represents a certain quantity of apples, and B represents a quantity of oranges, we can safely assume that C will refer to fruit of some kind. If with is involved, however, the resulting C may belong to a different family altogether; instead of adding letters A and B together and getting the letter C, with adds A and B and, for example, ends up with the word Â&#x201C;yesÂ&#x201D; or the number 6. In order to achieve with, it is not enough simply to add elements together and hope for the best, their combination and transformation must be studied and controlled like a complex alchemical recipe. Compare with beside-beside-beside.

D C

G F

1 Bagnolet site plan

9.2 > WITH EPISODE: Bagnolet

Legend A B C D E F G H I

Boulevard Périphérique Shopping Mall, Hotel Complex Subsidized Housing Blocks, Pre-Existing Twin Office Towers Avenue Galleni, Metro Entrance and Bus Stop Entrance to Parking Plinth Hotel Office Towers A3 Expressway

2 The Expressway and the Curtain Wall

3 Bagnolet Site Plan; Serge Lana, 1970

There must be thousands of freeway interchanges in thousands of cities arranged very much like the loop that connects the Boulevard Périphérique to the A3 freeway on the eastern edge of Paris at Bagnolet. The A3, which connects Paris to Lille and Brussels, ends here, and a tennis-racquet-shaped traffic interchange funnels traffic between the local street grid, the urban system of the Périphérique, and the regional network of the A3 (fig.1). The node in itself is impressive but hardly exceptional, not even along the Périphérique -- the massive tangle of on and off ramps at Porte de la Chapelle is much larger and more complicated. Within and around this traffic node, however, sits a tremendously ambitious complex of housing, shopping, hotels, office blocks, and transportation interchanges, elevating what would otherwise be a massive but unexceptional traffic knot into a La Defense of the east, a formal and programmatic gateway to the city of Paris. Although the ambitions of the complex are camouflaged by the banal architecture of the European commercial strip in which it is clad (fig. 2, 4), (imagine the American commercial strip, reduce to 7/8ths scale, and trade nostalgic historicist names and architectural flourishes and for pan-European naming conventions and an apparently optimistic neo-futurist aesthetic) Bagnolet is no ordinary, organic accumulation of infrastructure and supporting program; the project was carefully directed by Parisian architect Serge Lana, who from 1964 to 1976 designed the node to be a mixed-use pole at the intersection of the local and regional highway systems. Not completed until 1992, under the direction of shopping mall expert Carlo Natale, the Bagnolet complex synthesizes elements of infrastructure and ancillary program into a new whole, a complex that demands that the roadways, shops, and hotels all make small adaptations and concessions in order to work together. Lana conceived of the Bagnolet complex as both a center in its own right and as a satellite to central Paris. As such, the project included a series of office towers and hotels, as well as a massive park-and-ride lot with capacity for 2,800 cars (a parking d intérêt regional, in Lana s words) for commuters who would ostensibly drive to Bagnolet and continue on to the city center via metro or bus. The highway intersection

4 Bagnolet Node from Northeast

was central to the entire development; Lana was aware that the traffic node wouldhave to accommodate other programs in and around it, and he therefore worked to simplify the traffic pattern as much as possible, avoiding the sprawling nests of roadways found at Bercy and Porte de la Chapelle. Within this controlled figure of freeway ramps, then, Lana would fit the support programs. Below the entire complex is the Galleni metro station, terminus of line 3, which links Bagnolet to central Paris. A local and long-distance bus station sits at surface level, with a direct link to local streets and to the web of freeways above. The triple-decked parking d intérêt régional forms a plinth within the central traffic loop; ramps allow direct entrance and exit from the garage to the freeways that surround it. A regional shopping mall, hotel, and office complex is perched above the parking plinth, completed more than 20 years after the garage itself. Clusters of office blocks, hotels, and subsidized housing ring the traffic loop, with the twin steel and glass Mercuriales towers dominating the skyline, and marking the Bagnolet complex as a key moment along the Périphérique ring. The sheer concentration of programmatic elements and modes of transportation make Bagnolet an important point of intensity in the Paris region, and the effort to bundle these programs on, over, and around elements of infrastructure is a fulfillment of nearly a century of megastructural fantasies from Sant Elia through Banham to Koolhaas and his offspring. Yet there remains something vaguely utilitarian and unsatisfying about the complex; it remains very much a fragmented and accretive project, without any easily identifiable form beyond the interchange ring itself and the twin mirrored towers alongside it. Perhaps this weak, apparently authorless form is the appropriate strategy for what is primarily a zone of programmatic, rather than iconographic intensity. Lana s site plan is his masterwork. The elevations are only there because they have to be. Still, Bagnolet offers us the promise, only partially fulfilled, of the formal and programmatic hybrid of infrastructure with the city it serves.would once again become important nodes within the city, marking points of access to the regional expressway systems, and again serving as pressure-points for access to and from Paris. Like the earlier fortification

ring, the périphérique created a territorial barrier between Paris and its hinterland, and it was once again at the portes that local traffic would pass over or under the new separation wall. It is thus possible to understand the portes as points of contact between a local system (roads connecting exterior arrondissements of Paris with the nearby suburbs) and a global network (expressway ring linking Paris to suburbs, France, and Europe); the portes as they exist today might then be seen as moments in which these two systems are overlaid, coexisting, quite literally, on different planes. It could be argued that the portes represent moments at which the local system of streets is able to continue despite the interruption and clash of scaled presented by the périphérique. This reading, however, ignores the complexity of the situation. The newly formed portes are more than mere continuations of the local street network over and under sections of the périphérique with the addition of traffic exiting and entering the expressway system, the portes were transformed, beginning to take on a formal identity of their own. The new nodes of traffic were expanded to form traffic roundabouts, funneling cars between local streets and the périphérique below. These roundabouts are often surrounded by shopping and apartment towers, in some cases weakly echoing the Hausmann-era traffic circles of central Paris. Granted, this is not a particularly strong formal identity. But these new roundabouts allow the portes themselves to become identifiable points within the city. What had once been nothing more than the point at which a bottleneck of roadways converges to pass through the fortification wall, now carves out a patch of territory for itself. The local system adapted to the change from fortif to perif 1 and in doing so, created a series of new portes with ambitions well beyond the mere connecting of one thing to another.

Q: CAN YOU FIND THE FOLLOWING?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

1950 s bousing blocks Offramp Boulevard Périphérique Avenue Ibsen High mast lighting tower Sidewalk Boulevard Périphérique Twin office towers Connector A3 freeway from Périphérique 1990 s housing block Entrance to parking plinth Local street lamps Man on motorcycle Billboard for Bel-Est shopping mall Onramp A3 freeway from Avenue Ibsen Shopping mall

4 1

11 15

9 12 14

8 2 5

A: YES, YOU CAN!

How many did you find? 13-15 10-12 7-9 4-6 0-3

Genius Eagle Eyes Pretty Sharp Try Again Asleep at the Wheel

REGIONAL ORDER

METROPOLITAN ORDER

LOCAL ORDER

5 Avenue Galleni, urban edge of Bagnolet node

9.3 > WITH ZOOM IN Building the Bagnolet interchange called for the demolition of a large swath of territory; a number of local streets were completely erased in order to build the complex. Serge Lana s efforts to make the interchange as compact as possible, however, made it possible to maintain many of the pre-existing streets, and to anchor the Bagnolet complex into the local network of roadways (see fig. 1). The primary local entrance to the Bagnolet complex occurs along the Avenue Galliéni, alongside the local bus station and subway entrance. Freeway ramps pass above, the edges of the concrete slabs tapered and planted with vegetation, in an attempt one can only assume to minimize the impact of these massive concrete roadways on the streets below (fig. 5). This space should not work. One expects the underside of the highway node to be dark and noisy, and to some extent that is true. Yet the constant coming and going of people and traffic, and the earnest if meager attempts to prettify the space (read: flower pots and bus shelters topped with undulating roofs) gives the urban edge along Avenue Galliéni a surprising vitality. There is at this point a true intersection of scales local, metropolitan, and regional, and it seems a small miracle that the fine-grained urban texture of the local street, complete with skateboarding teenagers (fig. 6), is somehow able to persist. 94

6 Skateborders along Avenue Galliéni

RTE

ILL

TE OR

S ILA

N BAG

D OU

TE OR

CL ST.-

TE OR

RES

SEV

RTE PO

TIL HA

RTE PO

CY BER

9.4 > WITH ZOOM OUT The Bagnolet node is part of a chain of economic poles of shopping and office space along the Périphérique ring. The Renzo Piano-designed shopping complex at Porte de Bercy is the only other node to be associated with a freeway interchange. Other poles include Porte de Chatillon, Porte de Sevres, Porte de Saint-Cloud, Porte Maillot and Porte des Lilas.

AGAINST

10.1 > AGAINST DEFINITION Against is a coping mechanism. When proximity becomes a necessary evil, against, in both its passive and active forms, is the most common response. Passive against occurs when urban elements Â&#x2013; both new and old -- are placed uncomfortably close together. These elements are set directly one against the other, and neither seems particularly happy about the arrangement. The active phase of against then appears: a physical barrier that separates the two, allowing Â&#x2013; in theory, at least Â&#x2013; both elements to continue as though they were both alone. This barrier may well allow the unhappy neighbors to ignore one another, but the physical reality of the divider only serves to reinforce the awkwardness of their interaction, making against a physical reality. Compare with notwithstanding, despite.

10.2 > AGAINST EPISODE: Gentilly Edge

rue de montr

ouge

1910

avenue cou

turier

1950

avenue cou

turier

2003 2 Evolution of Gentilly edge

It should, by now, come as no surprise that the zone along the Périphérique edge is filled with examples of rough and uncomfortable contrast; it is here that Paris proper ends and the outside world begins, and the zone where the two abut can not help but be something of a battleground and threshold. The border between Paris and its suburban ring is both a firm political boundary (beyond this line, for example, the City of Paris is no longer responsible for paving the streets) and a more subjective boundary between urban typologies; all along this line, the fine-grained urban pattern of the satellite villages confronts the garden-city ambitions and military legacy of the zone non-aedificandi. Moments of against thus seem to spring up almost inevitably here, one after the other, all along the freeway. But no matter how prepared we may be for these awkward and unlikely edges, there is something remarkable in the violence and clarity of the border between Paris and Gentilly (fig. 1). Here, along the Cité Universitaire in the 14th arrondissement, the Boulevard Périphérique runs parallel to the Avenue Couturier, a primary local road connecting Gentilly with the center of Montrouge (fig. 2). This road, once called Rue de Montrouge, had been an important corridor between the neighboring suburban towns, complete with streetcar service along its length. But with the construction of the Cité Universitaire, beginning in 1925, the buildings on the northern half of the street were demolished and the remaining buildings on the street s south side were converted into the front line of the confrontation between Paris and its suburbs. More than 30 years before the construction of the Périphérique, then, this street already formed an important seam in the urban fabric, a dividing line made more emphatic by the orphaning of one half of an important street.

When the Périphérique was built in the late 1950s, it followed the path of the Avenue Couturier as it passed through Gentilly, running directly alongside the local street, converting what had once been a primary thoroughfare into a frontage road. The clash of scales here is truly brutal. Four and five story buildings now find their context completely changed, like the Berlin apartment blocks that suddenly found themselves face-to-face with the front lines of the Cold War. Gentilly now faces a six-lane expressway; the local order is forced to rub shoulders with the regional, the slow with the fast. At some point, a barrier is built, most likely to protect the residents along the Gentilly front line from the noise and pollution of the Périphérique, but also, it seems, in an attempt to deny that the Périphérique is there at all. The metal barrier ostensibly allows the neighborhood to go on as before, to cope with the violence of the new arrangement. And although the decibel level is undeniably lower with this barrier than it would be without it, one can not help but wonder who is left on the outside looking in. The barrier is, in part, an admission of failure. Gentilly is unable to absorb or co-opt the Périphérique as is passes through, and the planners of the Périphérique were unable to find a response to the problem of the urban edge more subtle than a large wall. The result is a threshold that is terribly thin the sheets of blue and white corrugated metal that form the barrier measure just a few millimeters but is, in its finality and authority as an urban border, seemingly insurmountable.

3 church of cité universitaire and campus, circa 1950: off-axis, but part of composition

4 church of cité universitaire and campus, circa 2000: composition fractured

10.3 > AGAINST ZOOM IN The founders of the Cité Universitaire, Rockefeller among them, were internationalists; they planned an academic campus for international students, with individual pavilions--like those designed by Le Corbusier for Switzerland and Brazil--to represent the participating countries. Given the internationalist mission of the campus organizers, there was to be no official campus religious affiliation, and therefore, no church on the campus grounds. The Church of the Cité Universitaire was thus built just outside the campus limits, to the south in Gentilly. Financed by sugar magnate Pierre Lebaudy and designed by Pierre Paquet, the church was completed in 1936. Although expelled from the campus grounds, the church was clearly intended to harmonize with the complex, if not in vocabulary, then in urban strategy. The footprint of the church conforms with the general geometry of the primary university buildings, especially the Maison International, which forms the northern boundary of the campus s central quadrangle (fig. 3). The church s primary façade and bell tower faces this central space, slightly off-axis, but nevertheless positioned as a vertical counterpoint to the horizontal expanse of the Maison International, and an anchor for the southern edge of the quadrangle.

100

Apparently, the planners of the Périphérique were also internationalists. The freeway that passes along the southern edge of the campus cuts the church off completely from the campus to the north the secular aims of the founders are thus restored through the (divine?) intervention of infrastructure planning. The near-symmetry of the church with respect to the central quadrangle remains, but the 20-ft high metal barrier along the Périphérique makes it all but illegible from the campus itself (fig. 4,5). A modest concrete walkway spans the highway, a halfhearted attempt to restore the connection with the campus on the other side of the freeway. The walkway, crumbling and screened with chain-link fencing, aligns perfectly with the central quadrangle, almost entirely forgotten, but squarely on axis with the Maison International.

101

COVERED BELOW GRADE ELEVATED AT-GRADE PLANTED BARRIER ACOUSTIC BARRIER

10.4 > AGAINST ZOOM OUT Nearly the entire Périphérique includes some kind of physical barrier that separates the freeway from the city around it. Roughly 20% of the Périphérique is below-grade; in addition to the barrier formed by the side walls of the trench through which the roadway passes, these sections are in some cases screened off by trees or walls. In the few sections where the expressway appears at-grade (as at Gentilly, for example), barrier walls or trees line the right-of-way. Many of the elevated sections, too, include acoustic walls that line the highway edge.

102

10.5 > AGAINST SEE ALSO Instances of passive and active against seem to ring the entire PĂŠriphĂŠrique; acoustic barriers, plantings, tunnels and trenches form an active barrier against the roadway while the passive overlapping of Paris proper is sometimes more difficult to detect. These changes occur in the pavement itself, in the naming of streets, or in the signs that explicitly mark the end of the village, and the beginning of the capital itself.

103

Conclusion Much of this book is specific to Paris. The Périphérique occupies a symbolically charged site in the urban order of Paris, and few other cities would seem to provide an opportunity to build an expressway with such a potent symbolic charge. And the very name, Boulevard Périphérique places the ring-road, deservedly or not, into dialogue with the Parisian boulevards of Haussmann, themselves remarkable works of infrastructure. But I am not especially interested in Paris, at least not enough to write a book about it. My goal here has not only been to document the Périphérique, but also, and perhaps more significantly, it has been to provide a catalog of tactics by which large scale elements of infrastructure can begin to take on inflections from the city around it, and in doing so, to participate more meaningfully in the life of the city. Highways, bridges, and rail systems generally exist as part of an order much larger than the city itself, and therefore are rarely affected by the city around them. Superimposed on the urban fabric, they cannot engage or meaningfully enrich the city. The tactics outlined here, however, suggest ways in which the non-place can be made specific; instances of at, with, or through can be manufactured and sought out, and the success of an element of infrastructure can thus begin to be measured not solely in how efficiently it distributes traffic, or how

104

in how efficiently it distributes traffic, or how well or poorly it is integrated with the city around it. It can instead be assessed as a work of architecture would be: for its functionality, solidity, and its capacity to please and to surprise. For better and worse, there is much about Paris that can never be repeated. But the tactics outlined in this book, used consciously or otherwise, are not specific to Paris or to the PĂŠriphĂŠrique, though it is there that they can be seen in their purest form. They beg to be tried elsewhere, and consciously or otherwise that has undoubtedly been happening for years.

105

Bibliography Marc Augé. Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995. Jean-Louis Cohen, André Lortie. Des fortifs au perif: Paris les seuils de la ville. Paris: Picard Editeur, 1991. Pierre Couperie. Paris au fil du temps: atlas historique d urbanisme et d architecture. Paris: Editions Joël Cuénot. Norma Evenson. Paris: A Century of Change, 1878-1978. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979. Lars Lerup. After the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Lisa Mahar. American Signs: Form and Meaning on Route 66. New York: Monacelli Press, 2002. François Maspero. Paul Jones, tr. Roissy Express. A Journey Through The Paris Suburbs. London: Verso, 1995. Tomato Architectes. Paris: La ville du périphérique. Paris: Groupe Moniteur, 2003. Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, Steven Izenour. Learning From Las Vegas. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972.

Notes chapter 1: 1 Cohen, p. 70. 2 ibid, p.132. chapter 2: see Lerup.

chapter 3: Evenson, p. 309.

chapter 4: Tomato Architectes, p. 110.

chapter 5: see Augé

chapter 6: Maspero, p. 16. Evenson, p. 332. Ibid.

1 2 3

chapter 8: Cohen, p. 28. Ibid, pp. 29, 45. Evenson, 271-2. Ibid, p. 274. Le Corbusier. The Radiant City. New York: Orion Press, 1967. p. 13. Cohen, 181.

1 2 3 4 5 6

chapter 9: Tomato Architectes, 130.

106

Atlas

Paris Périphérique City and Vicinity

110

111

112

113

114

115

116

117

118

119

120

121

122

123

124

Layers An Appendix

Paris Périphérique City and Vicinity