Technology: Urban transformation in the heart of Paris - from Forum Les Halles to Cannopée
- Frank Kaltenbach
The novelist Émile Zola called the former market halls, which were completed in 1851, the “belly of Paris”. In 1969, the market was relocated to the periphery; four years later the cast iron structure was demolished. The belly had become a heart – where three suburban lines and five rapid transit lines intersect. In 1979, Les Halles, Paris’s largest shopping centre, opened. To visually connect the three subterranean levels with the ground level, Claude Vasconi and Georges Pencreac’h cut a funnel-shaped square out of the building massing. In 1986 the park – which is situated above a swimming hall designed by Paul Chemetov – is completed. But the “Forum les Halles” is never completely adopted by the people of Paris: the Forum and park remain separate entities, and the historic stock exchange building – which had been the culmination of Baltard’s central axis, was robbed of its urban point of reference. In 2007, an international competition for a re-conception of the entire complex was held: a new building for the Forum, an extension of the underground suburban station with additional entrances, and a redesign of the park. Paris-based architects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti submitted the most sensitive and operationally feasible project (the transportation hub and shopping centre must remain open during the entire 3-year construction phase) and won. All of the new structure’s load-bearing walls and columns, as well as the cranes and working platforms must adhere to the existing 11 × 16 m reinforced concrete grid that dates to the 1970s. The project’s theme is “Canopée de Paris” – a 7600 m² glass roof above the existing sunken courtyard – a grand entrance gesture, so to speak, to the Grand-Paris metropolitan region. The flanking three-storey wings accommodate shops and a variety of public amenities. At the scale of the city, the new concept reworks the main diagonal route that bisects the site and reactivates – with a nod to Baltard – the visual relationship along the central axis parallel to the Seine: from centre Pompidou, below the new glass roof, through the park to the stock exchange (ills. 1–5).
