Les Halles, the upset stomach of Paris

Since I’m busy packing for my flight tomorrow, I’m shamelessly pulling this entry from my old blog (which no longer exists). Some of you faithful readers of yore may have already read this.

As you can probably deduce from the articles I’ve linked to already, I spend a lot of time browsing the New York Times website. Well, here’s something that was published back in June, announcing the plans to redevelop Les Halles, the gigantic underground mall / above-ground garden / urban planning embarassment / slice of Americana / “what zeh fuck?” plot of land in the middle of Paris.

The location known as Les Halles had been Paris’s central market for over a thousand years. Long known as “the stomach of Paris,” everyday farmers and merchants would arrive there from all over the country and haul tons of crates of food to feed the city masses. In the 1850s, large, green iron-and-glass shelters were built to partially house specialized vendors (you can still find examples of this market architecture in cities like Rennes and Lille). If you wanna see what this gargantuan food market looked like, rent the film A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT (Un Longue Dimanche de Fiançailles), which has a short scene that uses CGI to recreate the old Halles (and Jodie Foster has a cameo to boot).

Anyway, in 1971 this millennium-old market was shut and torn down to make way for….a mall. Actually, it was shut down reportedly due to public health reasons and the market was relocated to the suburbs; but with the dismantling of Les Halles, a gigantic hole was left in the middle of Paris, which was soon filled by a massive American-style shopping mall and transportation hub underground, and a garden and some hideous 1970s architecture above ground. Today, it’s one of Paris’ least attractive neighbourhoods and a real embarassment to the city, although it’s popular with teenagers who flock to the mall and the fast food joints nearby (it’s also popular with drug dealers). Most Parisians, however, tend to avoid Les Halles, despite it being in the centre of the city.

Well, according to the Times, the area is finally getting a makeover. Here is a picture of what Les Halles may look like in a few years.

Writes the Times:

If it really is built, the design by Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti, two French architects experienced in working in Paris, anticipates creating new commercial and cultural spaces beneath a vast glass roof, variously described as a canopy, layered leaves or a shell but perhaps most evocative of the undulating movements of a manta ray.

That’s a helluva lot better than the white-disco-greenhouse architecture they have right now. The mall’s still staying — I guess even Paris needs a mall — but at least it will be more open-air, with the promise of terraces and a nicer garden. For me, Les Halles has always been the most confusing, most labyrinthine area of Paris. The descent into four confusing levels of commerce was always distressing because I never knew how I might ever find my way back out, and the garden, with its dizzying zigzag of gardens, offered no respite. The new plan for the area sounds a lot less stress-inducing:

Significantly, rising 36 feet above ground level, the Forum’s canopy — that is the architects’ favoured description — will not compete in height with two older landmarks of the neighborhood, the Church of St. Eustache on the southern edge of the gardens and the 18th-century Commodities Exchange to the west.

Under Mr. Mangin’s proposal, the gardens will have shaded paths in the manner of Barcelona’s Ramblas and offer large lawns where Parisians can play, eat or snooze. And as Mr. Berger imagines his own design, the gardens themselves will slope down toward the edge of the patio, in effect blending with the interior world of the canopy.

What strikes me me is that the current Halles is the most North American district of Paris and has a similar ambiance to the Eaton Centre, which is celebrated as constituting a vibrant area of Toronto. It goes to show you our warped sense of popular aesthetics and urban prosperity. Paris’ prolific (and open gay) mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, calls Les Halles “a soulless, architecturally bombastic concrete jungle.” I wish someone at Toronto’s City Hall would recognize Yonge & Dundas as the same thing, and stop turning it into a miniature Times Square.