Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

A concrete palace built alongside a hidden underground river from which thousands of the national treasures of the French state have disappeared. Definitely a part of the city worthy of further investigation!

At the entrance to the headquarters of the Mobilier National in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, the architect Auguste Perret placed two concrete guard dogs. Laying motionless on their plinths, they seemingly offer little protection to the state treasures that are stored inside the building. These treasures, perhaps tapestries from the Gobelins workshops or Louis XVI desks, are made available to ministers, bureaucrats and diplomats who are free to choose exactly how they wish to decorate their offices and reception rooms. At the end of their mandates they are supposed to return the goods, but it would seem that this does not always happen. Today, upwards of 16,000 pieces are unaccounted for.

Created over six hundred years ago, the Mobilier National has the role of storing, lending, repairing and sometimes creating a selection of national treasures. Originally based on the Place de la Concorde, by the twentieth century the Mobilier National desperately needed a newer and better adapted structure, and in 1934, modernist Auguste Perret was given the job. The creation he designed and built is one treasure that will hopefully not be allowed to vanish!

Perret was given a rather awkward piece of land to work with, nestled behind the Manaufacture des Gobelins within the grounds of the old family chateau. The terrain has a large slope, and was limited by the contours of the River Bièvre, a small stream which has today been buried underground (and which I will write about in more depth very shortly!). Perret though had a particular idea in his head, and was able to use the slope to his advantage to create a very astucious and interesting structure.

Auguste Perret was at once a rationalist, modernist and a classicist. He received a classic education at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, but became convinced by the qualities of concrete. For Perret though, concrete would architects of the modern era to create structures that would be the equal of those of antique eras. His buildings (the most famous of which are probably the Palais d'Iéna and the Théatre des Champs Elysées) all followed classical rules, and the Mobilier National was no exception.

Perret wanted to create a stately cour d'honneur for the building, but with the 4m slope he needed first to create an artificial ground level. Once this was in place he was able to build the three-sided structure around this courtyard. This raised platform also gave him a natural basement level where vehicles could enter directly from the rear. In many respects, he created a kind of updated version of the Hôtel Particulier with a built-in basement garage!

Although built entirely in reinforced concrete the building is nevertheless an attractive one. Perret believed in a rational use of materials and mostly chose to work only with the simplest block forms, but he often broke his own rules for purposes of decoration. He added traces of coloured marble into the concrete mix to find the perfect tint to the building and produced a series of columns which support a cornice on which the name of the building is written.

And then there are the dogs. A classical touch again, they look out across the sunken stream and make visitors hesitate before entering the building. Unfortunately though, the front of this building, alongside the Square René-Le-Gall, sees few visitors, and the dogs have slipped into an apathetic slumber. Whilst they rest, local dogs come and urinate on them, and members of the powers that be help themselves to the treasures from the unguarded rear of the building.

Hidden Treasures

Next Saturday (4th of July) the streets of Paris will be alive with treasure seekers as one of the biggest Treasure Hunts in the world takes place. This event has given me the opportunity to talk to Benoît Leoty, one of the team at event organisers Ma Langue au Chat, about the philosophy and practicalities behind the organisation of such events.

When I ask how such an original company as Ma Langue au Chat came into existence, Leoty is slightly troubled. The principal behind the company business is very simple, the organisation of treasure hunts, mostly in urban environments and primarily for business clients, but who could have found the idea for such a niche industry in the first place? Leoty first checks with Charles Carmignac, the company founder, that he can tell me the story, and once permission is given, he relates the charming tale.

“Charles Carmignac met a girl at a party and they got on really well. For the first date afterwards, she organized a treasure hunt around Paris, with the objective being to find out exactly where she was. For the second date he did the same, and it continued on like that afterwards. The story has not finished yet either, as they are now engaged to be married!”. Ma Langue au Chat was born when Charles Carmignac told this story to a group of people one evening and was then asked by one individual to organise something similar for a team at his company.

Ma Langue au Chat has now been in existence for over 5 years with the real turning point towards success being the day that they won the tender for the Paris Treasure Hunt. The event has now mushroomed into a day which needs upwards of 6 months of preparation and a team of 15 staff to run it (not counting the 120 volunteers, the numerous actors situated en route and the 300 shopkeepers and artisans who will be taking part on the day). For everyone involved, the event is looked at as being a chance to meet people, discover Paris and simply to have fun. Is this the objective of all their Treasure Hunts though?

“It depends on the client” says Leoty. “We have a package of standard pre-tested events, but many clients want something particular. In these cases, the treasure hunt is a medium, a way to communicate a message”. Whilst all events must have an element of fun and humour (company rules at Ma Langue au Chat!), the final message can be something serious, with sustainable development being a regular theme.

I’m also interested to know whether there is anything particular about Paris that incites such activities. For Leoty, Paris is their chosen area simply because it’s the place they know best and because most clients are based in the region, but they have also organised successful events in Barcelona, Shanghai and Morocco. “I love Paris and now see it in a completely different way despite having lived here all my life” Leoty explains, “however, the basic themes could be organised in almost any city”. Nevertheless, Paris with its old and new structures, secret passages, underground tunnels and buried rivers does retain a true air of mystery.

I ask whether this need to discover secrets and find treasures in a city environment is linked to a primeval fear of the urban, but Leoty doesn’t agree. “I think deep down we are all children and this activity helps us to rediscover our childhood. The city is normally a dull, bleak environment, somewhere we work and commute, and this helps us to see it in another light. It’s as if the city puts on a mask and suddenly becomes playful”.

Masks and play-acting are a central theme to Ma Langue au Chat’s activities. Actors are recruited to help teams begin the search and give assistance during the event, and will always be present when the treasure is discovered. Founder Charles Carmignac also wants the participants to see themselves as actors too, and to feel like they are discovering the plot as they go along. Perhaps the greatest satisfaction from the participants therefore comes from this feeling of being an actor in the city, and not just a simple passive inhabitant.

Finally, we come to the most important point, the goal and the grail – the treasure. “The treasure is absolutely essential” agrees Leoty, “it must be a huge moment involving a trick or a special challenge. It must solve the mystery and give the participants an immense feeling of satisfaction”. Jungian psychologists speak of the ‘grail legend’, in essence man’s search for what makes life meaningful, and perhaps seeking and finding treasure in this way helps us to satisfy an inherent need.
Ma Langue au Chat see their events as simple, fun activities, but perhaps they have stumbled across something that goes much deeper into our psyches!

The Paris Treasure Hunt:
Thanks first of all the MLAC team for their time and for the photos used in this post.
10 different districts of Paris are taking part in the event and the basic idea is that you choose one and pick one of the hunts on offer. In total, 80 different hunts are taking place, with one in each district being in English. Each hunt is expected to last for between 2 and 4 hours.
For more details, visit the official website.
I also recommend that you take a look at Ma Langue au Chat’s excellent and mysterious website!

An Exclusive Secret!
I asked Benoît Leoty if he could give my readers an example of a mysterious place in the city to check out for themselves and he gave me a suggestion. He gives no guarantees that you will find treasure though!

“Go to Rue Lepic in Montmartre, then find the number 45. In fact, you will see many number 45s on the wall. Push open the large double doors and you will find yourself…in another street! This old cobbled courtyard is a throwback to an older era, and is a part of the city that was swallowed up when the city expanded”.

A Flight Back in Time

For professional reasons I found myself last week at the Paris Air Show at Le Bourget in the northern suburbs of Paris, and although my brief was to concentrate on state of the art technology, I did manage to find some time to investigate the distinctive, historic architecture of the airport. It was my first visit to the site, but I can safely say that it is it is well worth the short trip from the capital for anybody who is interested in designs of the 1920s and 30s.

For over fifty years, Le Bourget was the principal airport of Paris. It was a place that saw the birth of aviation and the stationing of airborne troops during the 1914-18 war. The first passenger flights began around 1919, linking Paris to London, Brussels and Amsterdam, with around 6000 taking such flights in 1920. It was also the site of aviation advances and exploits, and was the place that Charles Lindbergh landed his ‘Spirit of Saint Louis’ in 1927, becoming the first man to cross the Atlantic single-handed. Over 150,000 people were present to see him arrive, and a delicate and graceful statue marking this event can still be found on site today.

As passenger numbers increased and to meet the needs of the large numbers of visitors expected for the 1937 Universal Exhibition, a new airport structure was required. The architect Georges Labro won the competition and designed a subtle, yet powerful 233m long building. The structure was a success, and with 21,000 flights and 138,000 passengers in 1939, Le Bourget became Europe’s second largest airport. But then war broke out.

Requisitioned and transformed by German troops, it was later almost entirely destroyed by allied bombardments during the liberation of Paris. However, being the only airport in Paris at the time, rapid reconstruction was needed once the war had finished, and it was Georges Labro who took on the job again, rebuilding the structure in almost its exact previous form. Passenger traffic eventually reached 600,000 travellers a year, but after the Orly, then Roissy airports were built, Le Bourget gradually slipped back into provincial obscurity.

The old and the new; an Airbus A380 flies over Le Bourget.

Despite the Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace taking up residence in the airport structures in the 1970s, we should not make the mistake of thinking that the entire site has become a museum. Today Le Bourget is Europe’s busiest airport for private and business traffic, and the hangars still resonate with the noise of creation and repair. These magnificent reinforced concrete structures give a glimpse of what the site looked like in the 1920s. Built by Henri Lossier in 1922, these massive 15m by 50m units were damaged in the war and slightly adjusted afterwards, but the basic forms we see today are identical to the originals.

Although the building was saved by the installation of the museum, it does seem today to be in need of the planned restoration project. The white marble exteriors are grey and crumbling, and green shoots are sprouting out of inaccessible corners. It is interesting also to see the carved sculptures on the façade held in place by netting. These figures were designed as a celebration of the far-flung French colonies, but it seems strangely apt today to see them represented as people being tied up and ensnared.

Despite these problems, Labro’s main airport building remains an architectural wonder and a rare glimpse of a unique period in history. The charming curves and timeless design should ensure that once restored, the building will still have a very long life ahead of it, even if the footsteps of passengers are now a muffled sound of the past.

Note: If you more interested in aviation than architecture, Owen has some great photos of the Paris Air Show on his blog.

The Fabric of Society

Reading an article recently, I was struck by a particular point. I may now have put down blood red roots into French soil, but I will always remain an immigrant. The whole topic of immigration is one that fascinates me, especially how it has shaped Paris throughout history, and forced the city to evolve and develop, and the article dealt with all these subjects. Taking a look at the integration of a Chinese community and the evolution of an inner-city area, the article, published in the influential Triple Canopy online magazine, was written by local journalist Jules Treneer. I decided to speak to him about the article and talk about the subjects he discussed in more depth.

The article deals ostensibly with the problem of monoactivité, namely the fact that a Chinese immigrant community has purchased a whole series of shop units across several streets in the 11th arrondissement and transformed them into wholesale textile plots. But what exactly is the problem here? In this one square mile area (Sedaine-Popincourt), 600 of the 850 shop units are now Chinese owned, and as Treneer points out, all are garish, with “names reminiscent of cheap perfumes: Lady Belle, Show Girls, Miss Coco”. The City Council and local residents believe this domination has killed community life, and a fight-back based around legislation has begun.

However, as Treneer tells me, monoactivité is not just confined to this sector. The Latin Quarter on the left-bank has seen bars, restaurants and food stores swallowed up by upmarket fashion outlets and art galleries, and banks and financial units have taken over much of the 8th arrondissement, but we rarely hear or read about this side of the problem. Is the action to remove the Chinese from the sector, simply, as Treneer mentions, a case of ‘bourgeois aesthetics’, or is it, as he also suggests, discrimination?

“My interest in writing this article was not necessarily from a perspective of urbanism but rather about how immigrant populations are integrated into France” Treneer told me. We were drinking coffee in the heart of a district that has seen waves of immigrant communities from around the world more or less successfully integrated, but what is different about this situation? During his research on the subject, Treneer was always surprised to see that members of the Chinese community were not given a voice in the French media when the subject was discussed, and it is this lack of dialogue which he believes to be at the heart of the situation.

"There is mutual distrust and a lack of understanding on both sides" he points out. Treneer himself had problems finding people prepared to talk about the subject. The controlling Parti Socialiste on the city council refused to speak to him, and it was also a struggle to find a representative of the notoriously discreet Chinese community. As he points out, “change in France has largely occurred through conflict then agreement, but here there has been neither”. Instead, the 'crime' of the Chinese community has been to not respect the unwritten laws of French society.

In the article, Treneer makes an interesting contrast with the previous dominant group in the area - Sephardic Jews from the Ottoman empire. Although they kept much of their culture, they also immediately adhered to community rules and even signed up to go to war. Contrast this with the Chinese who have successfully created a parallel society of their own, with their own shops, banks, doctors, and funeral parlours. They are the very opposite of a financial burden on the state, but the state does not like to feel unwanted and ignored.

“The successful running of French society hinges on people playing the game and adhering to a system of cultural consensus" Treneer points out. “What you have to remember though” he adds, “is that the French identity and the concept of community were constructed by the state in the 19th century”. For Treneer, this shared identity, imposed by a paternalistic state, is artificial and ultimately unhelpful, leading to increased exclusion. In effect, the Chinese are now being punished simply because their idea of commerce and society does not match the dominant French model.

The French have always tried to limit the power of the market and inject social constraints into the world of commerce. The solution found by the City Council to combat monoactivité has been to use powers of pre-emption on empty units and fill them with carefully chosen tenants, but a question worth asking is whether we can stage manage city life in this manner. Interestingly, Treneer points out that many of the stores that have been chosen have been idyllic units selling organic food and handmade gifts, but not necessarily what people are likely to use on a daily basis. "Are these really economically viable? If they were, would they need this legislation?".

The truth in this particular case is a very cloudy mix. The Sedaine - Popincourt area has never been particularly picturesque and has always been dominated by textile related trades. The business of the Chinese is nothing new here, and as Treneer points out, it is more the large supermarkets that have killed community commerce. Is this then the French state trying to force a group to comply with certain rules? Treneer is an American and more used to a model of integration through work, "if you are law abiding and hard working in the United States you'll be left alone" he points out. So just what is successful integration? The individual adopting the local culture, or the individual being successful within the framework of an adopted state? Personally I'm trying for both!

Additional Information:
Read Jules Treneer's full article here.
All photography in this post, except the first picture, published courtesy of Romy Treneer.
Jules Treneer will also be working for the soon to launch Faster Times online journal.

Invisible Music

This Sunday sees the now traditional Fête de la Musique in France, and although I'm not a huge fan of the event, it does give us the opportunity to experience some unusual places in an original way. I dislike the crowds and the almost forced joyousness of the experience, but the selection of places I mention here should remain quite calm and restrained!

The following is a list of places I've previously written about on my blogs where musical events are taking place:

Chapelle St Louis, Hôpital Salpetrière: Berlioz, Mozart and Verdi in this empty, cavernous structure should be very impressive! (18:00 - 20:00)

Institut du Monde Arabe: North African music (19:30 - 23:30)

Hopital St Louis: Various styles in a wonderful relaxing environment (14:00 - 20:00)

Musée de Cluny: Just a one hour show based around the theme of women in the Orient (12:30 - 13:30)

Temple du Foyer de l'Ame: (Pictured above) Classical music performed on the organ, and a rare chance to visit this interesting building near the Place de la Bastille (18:30 - 19:30)

Finally, a special mention. Regular reader Tim will be playing at the La Tactique bar in the Rue Pascal (75005) at 15:30. I'll be there!