LA DEFENSE

When construction began back in the 1950’s, the Paris skyscraper district called La Defense was considered one of the world’s most ambitious civil engineering projects.  Hmmm.  Maybe in the 50’s, and maybe by the French.  It is, without a doubt, one of the most bizarre collections of building and public “art” assembled in one place.  It lies west of the city proper, at the end of  Metro line # 1.  Today it has more than 100 major buildings, and houses the headquarters of 3/4 of France’s top 20 corporations.  The only skyscraper within the city proper is the blight-tower, the Tour Montparnasse.  After it was built in 1973, the city outlawed all further skyscrapers. 

Anyway, La Defense’s iconic structure is the Grande Arche, 35 stories tall, and envisioned as (caution: Frog-speak alert!) “a window to the world, a symbol of hope for the future; that all men can meet freely.”  OKayyyy.  Whatever, it’s impressive.  And designed by a Dane.

And pretty cool from certain angles.  Hey, there’s that red-coat chick again.

Too bad it was a gray day for photographing all this gray architecture.  Amongst the buildings are 60-some artworks, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, with many “what the . . . ?”’s in between.

We did like the giant Calder spyder, and these nifty textured/colored towers, called Vive le Vent (Long Live the Wind?).

The carousel was particularly neat.  The French don’t just do horses.

This must have been a Jules Verne theme, with the Nautilus, the balloon from “Around the World. . .,” and the space ship (“From Earth to the Moon”). 

Some of the objects looked a lot different when viewed from afar and then close up.  Interesting to see how the grand “painting” effect is created from all those individual tiles.

When we got there, it was about ten in the morning, and the place was absolutely deserted.  We were wandering around almost alone.  At noon, however, all hell broke loose as the 150,000 office workers all pour out for their two hour (!) lunch break.  So, we joined them.  At night, this becomes a ghost town, not unlike downtown L.A.

One of the most overblown descriptions of the architecture was applied to this black one, “indicating an impressive architecture of a sober black gloss, inspired by the monolith of the film, 2001, A Space Odyssey.”  C’mon.  It’s a black box, just like dozens around the world, including a matching pair in downtown L.A.  About the dullest architecture going.

One thing the French do do very well is to incorporate open spaces into their work environment, like the huge plaza that runs down the center of this entire project, with lots of seating areas, fountains, and reflecting pools, like this one at the very end, facing back into downtown.  Very tiny, almost hidden by Loni’s head, is the Arc de Triomphe. 

The Great Arch of La Defense faces down this central corridor, and the whole thing lines up with the Avenue de la Grande Armee, which arrows into the Arc de Triomphe and then on to the Champs Elysees.  Beautiful symmetry. 

Snarky though I might be with some of my comments about the art and architecture, this definitely was well worth a day’s visit.