architects go to the basilica in saint-denis for the remains of abbot suger's choir, an early essay in gothic architecture, so early in fact it is the birth, or at least one of the births, of gothic. this isn't it.
standing in suger's choir, I accidentally turned the other way and looked down the aisle, built with the nave a hundred years later, a hundred years into the frenzied development of gothic architecture, and I realized there are at least two good reasons to visit saint-denis.
each pier here is subdivided into twelve thin shafts, each shaft playing its separate part in defining bays, arches and vaults as they rise. we might call this the analytical aspect of gothic, except no amount of analysis will bring about an expression of such insistence. notice how the piers or columns proper are nowhere to be seen, the whole lost to the endless repetition of its smallest parts.
by contrast, the nave is all glass and light and apparent clarity - how the gothic builders wanted their work perceived. I preferred the aisles for their shadows and compulsive monomania.
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more words, yada, yada, yada.
Tags: basilique saint-denis paris france gothic cathedral cathédrale abbé abbot suger architecture arkitektur arquitetura arquitectura architectuur architektur architettura jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC
french communist party headquarters, place colonel fabien, paris, france 1965-1971.
auditorium completed 1980.
architects: oscar niemeyer (b. 1907) with jean de roche, paul chemetov and jean prouvé.
dome of the underground auditorium.
more niemeyer here.
Tags: oscar niemeyer oscar niemeyer Jean de Roche Paul Chemetov Jean Prouvé jean prouve architecture modernism french communist party headquarters HQ parti communiste francais paris france house building entrance concrete curtain wall arkitektur arquitetura arquitectura Architectuur Architektur Architettura modern seier+seier creative commons CC
link to full size photo.
french communist party headquarters, place colonel fabien, paris, france 1965-1971.
auditorium completed 1980.
architects: oscar niemeyer (b. 1907) with jean de roche, paul chemetov and jean prouvé.
jean prouvé's curvaceous curtain wall may be more striking, but the entrance is the key detail of niemeyer's communist HQ in paris. yes, you enter through a hole in the ground - under a suspended white canopy shaped like a bird, alluring and menacing at the same time. words that also describe the building as a whole.
enric miralles once quoted this entrance almost verbatim. except he used it for a cemetery. we have only reached the front door and already the ambiguity is overwhelming.
the visitor reaches the entry by walking across a strange, abstract landscape in concrete towards an office building in black, tinted glass. the office building is hovering slightly above the ground. the concrete landscape is the roof of the windowless, public part of the headquarters which is placed in the basement. you also enter the office building through this basement. the stairs and lift are hidden from view, adding mystery to the hovering offices which appear entirely detached, like a UFO for bureaucrats.
apparently, safety played a key part in deciding the formal layout by which entrance and public functions were placed below ground. without knowing the details, this seems likely; after all, the communist party played an ambivalent role in western europe during the cold war. but there are also known models, not least le corbusier's unbuilt olivetti laboratories from 1963. you can find it in the last book of his ouevre complète. it is a much larger, but also much kinder project.
if you know the architect for his bright, populist monuments in brasilia, buildings famous for their pop-art shapes and a certain lightness of touch, you will hardly recognize him here. niemeyer, an admirer of stalin, had been forced into exile by the military regime in brazil. this coincided with the commission of the party headquarters. you have to imagine the crisis he was experiencing and the symbolic importance of the job. he needed this to be a masterpiece. he even worked for free to have more money for actual construction.
and his artistic choices made sense. no marble cladding, no white render; a house for workers displayed its béton brut proudly. it added a visual and counterintuitive weight to a building which repeatedly denied gravity. the strange concrete landscape was intended for demonstrations, games, life. empty, it signals everything but... and the security issues, well, considering what the architect was going through, they must have felt very real, but you can feel the fear, the paranoia.
the detailing is the finest of any niemeyer building I know. niemeyer did not usually care for detailing, he wanted shapes and routinely left out little things like railings. not here. his french collaborators delivered state of the art.
yet the combined effect is not that of a maison du peuple. rather, it seems related to surrealism. the intensity is bewildering, the geometry almost feverish, no straight lines or right angles outside the windows. the atmosphere is not welcoming in any traditional sense. the tinted glass is hostile despite the elegant cool of its late-modern presentation.
it has been argued that niemeyer's architecture made the communist party look like the bad guys in a james bond movie, as if the building turned on its architect and told us what he could not see himself. cold war architecture could do little else, I would add. niemeyer's communist headquarters is an unsettling masterpiece.
more niemeyer here.
more words, yada, yada, yada.
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Tags: oscar niemeyer oscar niemeyer Jean de Roche Paul Chemetov Jean Prouvé jean prouve architecture modernism french communist party headquarters HQ parti communiste francais paris france house building entrance concrete curtain wall arkitektur arquitetura arquitectura Architectuur Architektur Architettura modern jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC
after all that touchy-feely, scandinavian humanism that no one can live up to anyway, least of all the scandinavians, I thought we needed some unapologetic, hardcore late-modernism.
so, what are we looking at? who is the architect, and who helped him design a curtain wall so minimal the hinges are fixed through the glass itself?
EDIT: well, that didn't take long:
french communist party headquarters, place colonel fabien, paris, france, 1965-1971 (auditorium completed 1980).
architects: oscar niemeyer with jean de roche, paul chemetov and jean prouvé (curtain wall)
more niemeyer here.
this photo was uploaded with a CC license and may be used free of charge and in any way you see fit.
if possible, please name photographer "SEIER+SEIER". if not, don't.
Tags: oscar niemeyer oscar niemeyer Jean de Roche Paul Chemetov Jean Prouvé jean prouve architecture modernism french communist party headquarters HQ parti communiste francais paris france arkitektur arquitetura arquitectura Architectuur Architektur Architettura modern seier+seier creative commons CC
...if you're dead, royal and white.
medieval royal tombs at basilique saint-denis. almost all french kings were either buried in saint-denis or their remains were moved there later. the graves were disinterred and destroyed during the french revolution which also closed down the church. they were restored by viollet-le-duc in the 19th century.
getting rid of royalty made sarkozy possible, when you think about it, much the same way the wright brothers unwittingly invented the plane crash.
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Tags: royal tomb grave necropolis basilique saint-denis paris france gothic cathedral cathédrale jenskristianseier seier+seier creative commons CC