Paris II

http://www.ricardobofill.com/EN/683/architecture/portfolio/les-espaces-d-abraxas-html

Les espaces d'abraxas was constructed in 1982 as the landmark building of the new town of Marne-la Valée, in the easternmost part of Paris. A 15 minute journey on the RER A from the centre of paris, it, and the surrounding area were proposed as a radical new plan for urbanism in paris, and part of a radical shift away from disappointing post-war building efforts.

As I've said elsewhere, Postmodernism was an movement, which began materially in the late 70's to react to the grey, meaningless and intimidating spaces that modernism, and the associated brutalism, had created in the years from after the war. Marne-la Valée must be one of the most significant and large developments to happen as part of this movement, so I took the opportunity to take it in on my recent trip to Paris.

I had heard things both positive and negative about this place, but most prominent in my mind was a scathing report in Deyan Sufic's 100 mile city. I will take you on a photographic journey through this experience.

One is greeted, when getting off the train, with this staircase as an initial impression of the area. So begins the theme of happy colors.

You are taken to a large public square, habited mainly by noisy French children making what they can of the flat concrete space. Punctuation of this space with architectural 'events' such as above are very frequent, but they seem to have lost their velour in the 30 years since construction.

The heavily applied feature colors and the gabled roofs are what separate this developments from the angry, rough lines of brutalism.

Coming off the square, one finds a vague and puzzling selection of very large commercial modern buildings. I went on a Saturday, so this entire surrounding fringe was completely empty.

Besides the odd friendly Careffour trolly that is. I was puzzled to see these littered around the area.

Approaching the main event, Les Espaces D'Abraxis, we come across this rather large and monumental 'traffic solution'.

I take these views in, on foot, safe in the knowledge that the urban planner didn't give one cent for pedestrian access.

And there she is. The first thing to hit you is the scale (16 storeys?), then the complex staggering of forms, and only then do you recognise the references to classical architecture. The most powerful feeling is a sense of awe. The negative kind.

This is the main vestibule, with walls the size of most Paris buildings, encroaching on a thin channel between the two main residential slabs. The man provides appropriate scale. Above this channel, you see many crisscrossing walkways and blocks, which give the space this abhorrent mixture of proportions.

The walkway opens up to the theatre, herein lies the money shot, the westernmost crescent of buildings, complete with plate glass classical columns.

As I continued to experience this space, a feeling of dread increasingly grew over me. The surprisingly small number of  residents I spotted gave me suspicious looks, understandably, they probably get too many aspiring photographers  intruding on their place. But this brutal cacophony of shapes made me feel really uneasy. 

As an example of ridiculous application of scale, first see our man, zoomed in, and his surrounding space.

That's him there, past that car, with the red bag. How overbearing is this structure?

I approach my way out, leaving by a different route, somewhere through there? I also have found my explination for the shopping trolley. A Careffour supermarket lies just beyond this lump of concrete, and the residents find it easier to take their shopping direct to their door and abandon it.

This image captures again the silly mis-relation between man and building.

And this is our way out. Yep, this, from my observations seems to be the primary pedestrian route in and out of Les Espaces D'abraxas. Ricardo Biofill's vision of appropriate public space hasn't stretched very far if I have to make my daily commute through a 50 meter multi-storey carpark.

Dread was my primary emotion in this aesthetic experience. It would be perhaps be more rigorous of me to do more than affirm my pre-existing beliefs about a space, but I can't find another way round. The witty use of classical elements seemed so coarse in combination with which I can now confirm to be very small and awkward flats. It is all built at such a ridiculous scale as well. In good architecture, your eyes wander around the space, hunting for detail. With this over-saturation of  'detail', I found my eyes looking for a way out.

It's so frustrating to think that this was completed mid-80's. It's basically contemporary. It is already crumbling, access is awful, and the space and the appearance themselves have a reputation among dystopian filmmakers. If one is to challenge the grey, meaningless and intimidating building of the mid-century, then one could do better than to produce something colourful, meaningless and intimidating.