The architecture opens the doors of its City (slide show)
After five years of work orchestrated by Jean-François Bodin, the City of architecture and the inheritance in Paris opens its galleries to the public as of Saturday at the time of the European Days of the Inheritance. Guided visit through 8.000m² of galleries and several centuries of architecture.
«We want to offer a stroll in the architecture of 12th century at our days, and to make available to all public the bases of the architectural and patrimonial general culture», declares François De Mazière, City chair of architecture and inheritance, in Paris. The whole 23 000m², located in a wing of the palate of Chaillot in Paris, shelters at the same time the museum of the French monuments, the French Institute of architecture (IFA) and the School of Chaillot (which trains the architects of the inheritance).
The museum will be officially inaugurated on Monday in the presence of the president of the Republic and prestigious architects, at the end of five years of work representing 82 million euros. But the event will take place as of Saturday, for the public will be able to invest, and free, the galleries reconsidered by the architect Jean-François Bodin at the time of the European Days of the Inheritance.
If each of the three galleries offers a different universe, the mouldings of buildings, models and reproductions on scale 1 create a true red wire through the times and the styles. One indeed finds there historical or reconstituted for the museum models in the gallery of the mouldings where you can find 350 mouldings of buildings of the Romanesque art from the 18th century. In this gallery, walls and furniture are the same red. «This colour makes it possible to give again the mouldings all their image, as much as people sometimes believes that it is about true stone», explains Jean-François Bodin, the architect of this new unit.
The medieval thanks to technology
The three galleries, of which two were renovated, are displayed out over 8.000m². In the gallery of modern and contemporary architecture one can visit, life size, an apartment of the radiant City due to Le Corbusier. 17 colleges of vocational training took part in the reproduction of certain parts of the apartment, «an extremely complicated but extraordinary operation: the public can enter inside and include/understand the life of the families living in the radiant City», explains François De Mazières.
And on the balcony of famous pilot housing, a little elevated compared to the remainder of the gallery, the visitor has impregnable sight on the hundred buildings presented, from the Eiffel tower to constructions of the vacation resorts on arrival of the 3rd paid vacations week, while passing the ancient Crystal Palace of Joseph Paxton, in London. To supplement these models of which some had been especially conceived for the 1889’s World Fair, documents from the audio-visual national institute are presented on big screen as on interactive touch screens. The interactivity is the other red wire of this museum, where visioguides, 3D images and joysticks make it possible to explore the Renaissance master pieces and to meet the great architects.
From Cahors to the Eiffel tower
Some steps from there, the gallery of the murals and stained glasses transports us in a true voyage in time. In an intimate environment, the Romance religious building frescos face the Gothic castle ornaments. The frescos of this gallery were reproduced with painting on fabric strengthened over plaster. «The idea is to recreate the atmosphere of a small vault, but it is all the same rather extraordinary to be found under the cupola of the cathedral of Cahors while having sight on the Eiffel tour», smiles François De Mazière, posted in front of one of the windows of the City through which the tower, symbol of France abroad, whose counterpart is besides visible at the entry of the museum.
Museum visit
Marie Desgré
