Paris Utopie : Paris des Utopies

40 years ago, the architectural historian Yvan Christ published Paris des utopies, a sort of Prévert inventory of the ‘great projects’ that failed the exit exam. It was the Pompidou years; Paris was mourning the loss of its halles centrales, and Malraux himself was refusing to give up on the architecture of Hector Guimard. The idea of a Napoleon bridge topped by an imperial effigy in the style of the Colossus of Rhodes was seen as a picturesque piece of junk, with the excesses of Corbusé relegating it ad aeternam to the cupboard of garden gnomes. But the moderns have come and gone, and with them the post-moderns; self-proclaimed ‘great’, Paris is asking itself questions... We thought it would be appropriate and, why not, fun to re-edit this catalogue of secular extravagances. We've added a few surprises that escaped the author's notice - a grandiloquent pastry shop at the back of the Palais de l'Institut, the crypto-Stalinist skyscrapers at Porte Maillot - as well as more contemporary projects that show just how vigorously the old capital of the Merovingians continues to excite the verve of architects.