AUTHOR’S NOTE: This architectural tour was actually taken in November 2007, when Paris was in the midst of a major transit strike and a rather nasty cold spell. It’s cold in Paris in the winter. More so than in Dublin, and I fell sick while I was there. Thank God we had hired a mini-bus to take us around. The time we did spend walking the city kept me coughing for two weeks after we returned. As such, I hold no accountability for any senseless content within this article, as I was hopped up on cold meds the entire time. As if that would keep me from going to Paris…

Arrival Time

Because it is a fairly normal thing for architecture firms in Europe to do, my boss decided to take a long weekend and ship the office to Paris for a study tour. (It is perfectly OK to hate me at this juncture.)

Please note there are no quotes around the phrase study tour. When my last firm took us to Paris, it was a “study tour”, which translated into Irish means “free weekend in Paris to drunkenly tear around the city”. For this tour, however, we had a chauffeured mini-bus to take us to our appointments to see various projects, and studying was actually done.

Our first day we landed at noon, and after checking into the hotel we immediately went to lunch. It would have been impolite not to have lunch first. Always participate in the native rituals when visiting foreign countries, I say. And in France, food is only slightly second to fashion in national pastimes.

After a very long lunch, we went for a walking tour of central Paris, part in twilight, part by the light of the moon. It’s a beautiful way to see Paris, especially if it’s cold, and there are fewer people to contend with.

We stopped in Notre Dame just as Mass started, which featured an all female choir. It was worth the trip to Paris for just that. Beautifully sweet voices ringing through the cathedral, echoing off the gray stone pillars, lit by candles and chandeliers so high up they appear as candlelight.

I prefer Notre Dame by candlelight. It is a very dark and gloomy cathedral otherwise. The heavy gray stone has been blackened by centuries of soot. Any masonry detailing within reach has been rubbed smooth by the hands of pilgrims. The sun that filters in must contend with narrow windows of darkly colored glass. It is a very forbidding place on first visit. Beautiful, but weighty and grand in a very ominous way that I cannot explain. Perhaps it is because I’ve only been to Notre Dame in the winter.

Rocked Opera

We stepped out of the cathedral after about 20 minutes and continued our tour of Paris with no real agenda but to end up near the L’Opéra de la Bastille for dinner. I’d never seen the new opera house, but I knew the story.

It was a standard architecture competition; the winner was an absolute nobody who won only because the judges thought it was a hastily designed entry by Richard Meier. Assuming the design would develop after he won, they awarded him the commission.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t a hastily designed entry by Meier, and it didn’t develop after the competition, and so Paris has an opera house that looks like a telecom headquarters in the tech suburbs of Dallas. It’s very round and gridded and white. I’m not exactly sure how anyone would know it was an opera house. Nothing about it says culture, and I can’t imagine opera lovers at the grand opening would have said the same. At least it’s off my list of things to see in Paris.

Coffee, Characters & Corbu

The next two days we were in the mini-bus, being driven around Paris both past and present. It was my only salvation for the weekend. Mini-bus means you can sleep between sights. Metro means you cannot. Our itinerary for the weekend was thus:

These are not bad people to be hanging out with for the weekend.

We started the tour by visiting Maison La Roche Jenneret in a very pretty suburb of Paris. It was one of the places for which we had an appointment, and with the transit strike (I’m unclear how this works here), there was very little traffic on the road, so we had 30 minutes to kill before we presented ourselves. One would think the congestion on the roads would be worse with no bus/metro/taxis but no, Parisians do their own thing once again. Personally, I think Paris is going to see a bit of a baby boom in nine months.

We found a little café nearby and went for a coffee. Living in Ireland, I’m rather used to being in the pubs during the day. It’s where you meet, having tea on a cold day. Lunch is served there, and the occasional town meeting held. The Irish pub is a very well used and versatile place. But being in a bar in Paris at 10am was more than a little odd. It was not a café; it was a bar with 10 of us piled in ordering coffees and hot chocolates, while the other patrons watched horseracing. It was an odd little place on many fronts.

Firstly, it featured the best selection of Scotch I’ve seen outside an actual whiskey shop. All my favorites were there, but since it was only 10am, I had a coffee.

Secondly, next to the massive keg-sized bottles of Veuve Clicquot that were autographed by, presumably, the dinner party that had consumed the champagne, was a vintage Guinness sign. The Irish are indeed everywhere.

Thirdly, the man seated behind us muttering to his paper, and occasionally shouting at it, was dressed head-to-toe in pumpkin orange: orange turtleneck, orange button up, orange trousers. I’d venture a guess his socks were orange as well. No one spoke to him but they all seemed to know him. We tried not to stare openly. I think we failed. Between the five nationalities sitting at our table, we agreed that none of us have such well-groomed crazy people running out in the open in our respective countries.

In This Case, God Wasn’t In The Details

One quick coffee later and I was walking into my first Le Corbusier house. We’d studied it in my undergraduate courses – everyone does – and I was sort of excited to take photos and send them back to my friends from those days. Bragging is, of course, the main reason I travel.

My observation” It’s tiny. For an urban European lot, that much, I suppose, is to be expected. But all the photos and drawings I’ve ever seen had led me to believe it was this grand white mini-mansion in the city. It’s the size of an average house.

Also, there is a serious lack of detail happening inside. Nothing really finished in any way. Edges were rough and just sort of banged out. I was shocked by the rudimentary detailing but chalked it up to the amount of years it was abandoned and in need of renovation. However, Jeanne, my French co-worker, and I had a conversation about her dislike of Corb for exactly that reason: all grand gestures, no detail.

Great entrance space though, and nice day lighting in the rooms. The ceilings – when not double volume spaces – were quite low. I could easily place my hand palm flat on the library ceiling. The great swooping ramp in the main space is treacherously steep. Going up the ramp, I was amazed at what a workout it was for my legs. Coming down the ramp, I could only focus on the non-tempered glass door at the foot of the ramp and consoled myself with the fact that France has the best hospitals in the world. It’s not much of a consolation for a woman of my gracelessness, but I managed to walk down without falling.

Standing outside on the terrace, I tried to strip away the years of development since the houses were built in order to see it as Corb saw it. Modern context often leads to harsh and unfair conclusions. I’d say it was a stunning and clever use of an inconvenient site in its day. I’d wager it was shocking and controversial when built among such moneyed and traditional buildings. But overall, I left thinking: I am not a fan of Corb. And that, in this industry, is a heresy. A grand one.

More To Come