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Paris, cover 27.08.2003 9:05 Uhr Seite 1
The City of Light has long been an architectural innovator and showcase
for France and her rulers. A site of strategic importance since the 3rd century
BC, Paris flourished under the Romans, but subsequent Barbarian invasions
meant that comparatively little remains of her Antique splendour. In
the 6th century AD the Merovingian kings made Paris the seat of the realm,
a status the city has retained bar the odd interruption throughout the centuries.
By the 12th century, Paris was established as a political, economic,
religious and cultural capital.
Each epoch has left its mark on Paris: the churches of the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance, the aristocratic hôtels particuliers of the 17th and 18th
centuries, and the apartment, railway, industrial and office buildings of the
19th and 20th. A centralization of power in the capital long ensured that
Paris received more than its fair share of attention from princely »architectes
manqués«, from the Bourbons through the Napoléons to Président Mitterrand.
Baron Haussmann’s recasting of the city in the image of Napoléon III
became the model of its age for urban development, and the phenomenon
of the presidential »grands projets« in the 1980s and early 1990s provoked
comment the world over. When not directly shaping the fabric of Paris themselves,
its rulers have always kept tight control over the activities of others,
with the result that Paris has developed under some of the strictest building
regulations of any major city. Despite Paris’s much vaunted reputation as
the cultural salon of Europe, a certain suspicion towards foreign architectural
imports has characterized its development, and outside influences have
always been adapted to local needs and indigenous modes of expression,
a tradition which carried on until the postwar era and arguably continues
today. The last decades of the 20th century have witnessed a rush to modernize
and adapt a crumbling fabric to the exigencies of the electronic age.
Andrew Ayers studied at the Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning,
University College London, and now lives in Paris.
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ISBN 3-930698-96-X
9 783930 698967
Andrew Ayers The Architecture of Paris Menges
Andrew Ayers
The Architecture
of Paris