City Snapshots: The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver

Climbing up the ladder, there’s not so far to go. Towards the clouds, to my box in the sky, leaving my worries behind. Up here the city is in my control, its people a cast of tiny characters I can manipulate at will.

Lifting ten tonne logs like they were matchsticks, concrete panels like the pages of a book, I build this city from its ruins. I'm an eagle's eye and an elephant's trunk, with the grace of a dove and the force of a hurricane.

Some days I forget what my voice sounds like, swallowed by the twisting steel and radio crackles. The sky streaks in ever-changing colours around me, and clouds roll over my head, but I can never stop. I just keep turning my arm and building your dreams.

Day becomes night and there's only me left on site. Pinpricks of light appear across the world and the faces down below have all drifted away. Going back down to earth always seems so unnatural, but soon I'll have to descend. I'm standing on the precipice, but it's oh so far to fall.

Inspired of course by this song, and also by the ever-evolving film set in front of my window!

Défense d'Afficher - again?

I previously wrote about the ubiquitous 'Defense d'afficher' signs that can be seen painted on municipal walls around France, but my attention was drawn recently to another variation on this message.

This one was a small white plaque screwed into a brick wall in a non-descript back street, but what particularly stood out was the date of the law. This was not the standard 1881 decree, but rather one that dated from 1943 and France's infamous Vichy regime.

As the scrawled message on the plaque says, this was indeed a 'loi Pétainiste' (or rather a 'loi Laval'), but what exactly is being forbidden here?

The message writer here has spotted the date, and looked to make comparisons between France's collaborist state during the Second World War and today's perceived authoritarian rulers, but in reality the law mentioned is rather banal. However, it is also one that had a big effect on the way French cities looked.

Look back at old photos of Paris and you will see advertising painted onto all visible wall surfaces. Some of these traces remain as so called 'ghost signs', but this law is in fact the edict that signed their death warrant. It was the first law in the country that seeked to protect the esthetics of the city from rampant advertising, limiting the publicity to a restrictive maximum size and height.

Two questions remain though. Whilst the world was at war, why was the Vichy regime worrying about city esthetics? Secondly, why is a law voted by this regime still applicable today?

The first question is very difficult to answer. It is unlikey that the law had anything to do with restricting the actions of the resistance, and is probably more a reflection of the lack of important decisions the puppet state had to make.

Concerning the second question, the answer is that many of the Vichy regime's voted laws were allowed to stand after the war. As soon as De Gaulle returned to France and assumed leadership of the country, the collaborationist government was declared null and void. However, in the interests of simplicity, only the laws relating to the war were immediately repealed. All other laws were examined by jurists and very often reissued with no modifications, including the addition of a 'Mother's Day' to the French calendar!

Eiffel and the artists

In a letter sent to newspaper 'Le Temps' in February 1887, a group of artists, writers and architects criticised the soon to be built Eiffel tower, calling it "inutile et monstrueuse". Gustave Eiffel, an engineer and a "constructeur de machines", would be scarring the beautiful face of the city in an attack on generations of artistic creation. Were these cultural leaders aware though that just three years previously, Eiffel and his company had designed and built a collection of artists' studios in the west of the city?

Situated on the Rue Aumont-Thiéville near the Porte Maillot, this set of studios was built in 1884 using a new method for this kind of construction. The building is divided into six workshops each spanning an identical width, and the overall metal framework was made in Eiffel's Levallois factory. As these were standardised modules, they could be built at a lower cost and in a very short time. The rationality and simplicity of this architecture is closer to industrial buildings of the time, and in some ways anticipates the current fashion for artists to install themselves in converted factories and workshops.

The 1880s were a golden age for such constructions in Paris, but few artists' studios looked this way. The majority would have been far more pleasing to the artists who signed the letter criticising Eiffel, as they were built according to classical or neo-gothic designs. However, few have aged as well as Eiffel's, and several were even torn down before the dawning of the 20th century.

What is the role for such studios in today's city though? Artists are traditionally 'penniless', and such spaces as these would clearly be expensive to rent in Paris. It is no surprise therefore to see design agencies and osteopaths installed in some of the units, but one or two artists still seem to be using the facilities.

Finally, although this construction may have shocked or surprised when built, it has over time been surrounded by even more modern buildings. Reflected in the windows are some of constructions built by ed architectes (including their offices) in the 1970s. It's certainly not a style I appreciate, but I'm not sure I'd write a letter to a newspaper criticising it. Who knows what styles will survive the test of time?

Challenge 2: A vocabulary test

The vocabulary of the city is rich but often mysterious. Many of the things that surround us often go without names either because we are not sure what tag to attach to them, or because we simply have no need to refer to them in our daily lives. This is what lies behind a question Norman has asked me, which is the following:

"During our visits to Paris I have taken many, many pictures of devices such as this (see photo above). I am fascinated by their astounding variety in terms of design and materials. I know they are designed to protect the entryway from being damaged by carts, wagons and now cars and trucks as they enter. However, I do not know the name for them. Do you?"

Before I received Norman's question I have to admit that I had never actually thought about this particular object. Now that he has mentioned it though, I have started to see them everywhere, and it is a fascinating topic. The 'astounding variety' he mentions can give many clues about the age of a building, but also about the wealth of those who lived there - simple stone blocks for the less wealthy, extravagant iron designs for those with plenty of expendible income!

They are by nature an extension of the Porte Cochère (coach gate) which themselves are a throwback to a time of horses and large carriages. Investigating this widely-discussed feature of Parisian buildings would surely lead me to the name of the small features at the bottom.

A porte cochère in Paris with small conical devices at its base.

One book I generally turn to for this kind of research - Claude Mignot's Grammaire des immeubles parisiens offers no help though. There is no mention of these little city features, and it seems that it is obviously a sector that has not been deemed worthy of research.

Nevertheless, by flicking through another couple of sources, I come across the term. These little devices are called a chasse-roue, although they are also sometimes referred to as a boute-roue or bouteroue. In English, the term is a guard stone.

A final brief note. At the entrance to most of the buildings in which they are situated they serve no purpose at all today, but they are nevertheless destined to remain a feature of the city landscape for a long time to come. Why? Simply because they are so difficult to remove!

Note: Norman has now posted on the 'Chasse-roue' in Paris. See the many examples he has found here.

Challenge me!
Seen something in Paris that has caught your eye but remains a mystery, or ever wondered about obscure people or events in the city's past? Challenge me to find the answers!

A Brutalist Bridge?

I enjoy more and more taking trips out into the suburbs of Paris, principally because I'm never sure what I'll find. Whereas much of Paris has a homely familiarity to me today, the suburbs can still retain an exotic eccentricity.

Take Suresnes for example. Situated alongside the Seine to the west of the city, it is a working class town that was rapidly gentrified due to its proximity to the La Defense business district (it was in Socialist hands for 40 years and is twinned with Hackney, but has now been firmly under right-wing control for nearly 30 years). This contrast between the rich and the less wealthy, the modern and the ancient, has left many traces around the town.

What is immediately obvious is that the town must have rapidly grown in the 1960s and 70s, with the architectural styles of this period taking up whole chunks of the town centre. Alongside the standard tower blocks though is something genuinely interesting, and - let's be honest - completely mad too.

Straddling the principal artery through the town is the Ecole des Arts Plastiques - an art school and gallery - but is it a building or is it a bridge? It sits proudly on this main road, seemingly considering itself to be some kind of concrete Ponte Vecchio, but in fact it offers no means of passage across the street.

I am not sure who the architect of this structure was, but it is a fascinating appropriation of the public space, and an installation which is clearly still useful despite the chosen style having long gone out of fashion.