The cult of the balcony

On the Avenue Gambetta is a building with a very curious appearance. It is a structure defined solely by its three rows of balconies that completely hide the interiors of the building from street level. In return, those below are also invisible to those living in the apartments above, which have their focal points guided up towards the sky. The balcony is seemingly designed to offer residents an escape from the city.

The balcony in urban environments is not a new invention, but it is something that has slowly changed role. On Haussmanian structures, the purpose of the balcony was to protect the ‘étage noble’ on the second floor from noise coming up from the street, with a second balcony on the 5th floor merely to provide a harmonious balance.

The hygienest movement was the first to give the balcony an additional purpose. The constructions of the architect Henri Sauvage feature a balcony for every single apartment, each invisible from the other, with the goal being to improve the circulation of air, and to encourage people to spend time outside.

This largely practical and decorative feature though has slowly become a feature of fantasy and evasion. This notion of escape is important as it reflects the dreams of the majority of city-dwellers - simply to live somewhere else, ideally in a house with a garden or in an apartment overlooking the sea. The urban balcony now offers the double advantage of giving them a window on the world whilst at the same time hiding the fog of the city behind a mirage of space and greenery.

Balconies are now a key selling point, particularly of new apartments. When old buildings are knocked down, artists impressions of new builds appear in their place, showing families (people texture!) eating breakfast on sunny mornings surrounded by lush hanging gardens. The reality that appears later is somewhat different, although there is often a desire to recreate this artificial world. Look up at these city balconies and you'll see rotting and rusting garden furniture, but very rarely anybody using this equipment.

This dream vision takes us away from our daily lives and into the realm of a holiday existence, but is there any pleasure to be had in taking breakfast above a busy boulevard or in full view of our neighbours? The majority of balconies simply become extra storage space, a park for bicycles and children's toys - or worse still, an additional access point into the apartment for burglars.

The painter Gustave Caillebotte caught the original, more noble role of the balcony in the city. Caillebotte painted a series of enigmatic figures on the balconies of Haussmannian structures in Paris, none of whom were attempting to do anything more than observe the street below them. Ideally the balcony presents the city as a theatre, providing us with a narrow unobtrusive platform to watch the world go by (or have the world watch us!), possibly with a cigarette in hand. In Caillebotte's world the balcony is brought back to its rightful place - as a celebration of the city and not an escape from it.

Spirits of a Good Samaritaine

In the centre of Paris sits one of its most haunted spots. On one side, the bustling, commercial Rue de Rivoli, and on the other, the animation of the river Seine. Between the two, narrow, silent Rue Baillet and the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.

Ghosts of Christmas present. The buildings of La Samaritaine still stand firm, but like a ghost town in a Western film the inhabitants have all taken their horses and ridden away. The shutters are pulled firmly down, the locks rusting and the bottle green paint peeling and flaking to the ground. It is easy to imagine tumbleweeds rolling down this street and a loose wooden shutter creaking in the wind. There may even be a cowboy hidden away somewhere.

Ghosts of Christmas past. Generations of shoppers pushed open these doors, climbed the iron staircases, admired the art nouveau fittings and filled bags with quality goods and quality presents. In Christmas present the gifts will come from elsewhere. The doors of La Samaritaine have now been closed for four years and will never open to shoppers again.

Ghosts of Christmas past. These buildings are a gift from Ernest Cognacq. His first trading outlet was small change on the Rue de la Monnaie, but his vision was much grander. With his wife, Marie-Louise Jaÿ, Cognacq developed the structure, taking inspiration from the Bon Marché store on the left-bank, and built up a shop of departments, each individually owned and run. He plucked the name from a ghost, the Samaritaine fountain that used to sit on the neighbouring Pont Neuf.

It became an immense success, the right solution at the right time, celebrated with a redevelopment in a fashionable Art Nouveau design by Frantz Jourdain between 1903 and 1907. Later, in 1933, Henri Sauvage added a river-facing Art Deco palace, a ten-story temple to shopping with a rooftop terrace and a restaurant with a view across the south of the city. Ghosts of Christmas past, ghosts of Christmas present. It is these architectural touches, listed as historical monuments in 1990, which have saved the structure from destruction or brutal redevelopment, but which perversely also led to the decline of the store.

Ghosts of Christmas present, ghosts of Christmas yet to come. Along one side of the store runs the Rue de l’Arbre Sec. Legends tell us that this name refers to the dried wood of the hangman’s gibbet, and the association is apt here. La Samaritaine was condemned to die by its owners LVMH in 2004. It had become too old and dangerous they said. An expensive and time-consuming refit would be necessary to make it fit the required norms, so wouldn’t it be better to hang it out to dry, let time pass and put the buildings to more profitable use.

Ghosts of Christmas yet to come. In June 2008, LVMH submitted a plan to transform the store into office, small retail units, a hotel and a sprinkling of social housing - a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. The city of Paris have accepted the plan, preferring life to this slow death, and the redevelopment should be complete in 2013. The cavernous, empty interiors will breathe again, but the ghosts will never go away.

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach”

Hygienic Housing (Part 2)

What is the connection between the designer of the most elegant brothel in Paris and an organ player at Versailles Cathedral? The answer is Henri Sauvage and Charles Sarazin, a two-man design team who together worked on one of the most original building designs ever constructed in Paris. What is even more exceptional about their construction is that it was built as an HBM (Habitation à Bon Marché), and was created to serve the needs of the poorest members of society.

As noted previously, most of the HBM constructions in Paris were built in a ring around the city. They were generally solid, brick-built buildings, drawn to a similar plan and therefore looked largely alike. However, in smaller units where space was at a minimum, occasional more original designs managed to make it off of the drawing board, and this was certainly the case at the Rue des Amiraux, behind Montmartre.

The arrival of city authorities in the provision of social housing, and the large investments that went with this had inspired architects and designers to outdo each other with new ideas in an attempt to win the hefty contracts. The guiding principles behind the constructions, to house the working classes decently and to promote a healthy living environment and lifestyle, already gave ample inspiration to the architects, but this particular development zone, requiring a building to fill a ‘U’ shape with three facades on two different streets, was an awkward one that needed something ingenious.

Sauvage and Sarazin knew they had the solution, having already completed a similar building (Rue Vavin, 75006) which was the prototype of the construction they planned to build here. The design was in a pyramid shape, with each floor having stepping terraces and large windows that were designed to let in as much sun and air as possible. The most interesting aspect of the design was that the shape left a large internal space, an area that could be used for the encouragement of a ‘healthy lifestyle’. Sauvage wanted a cinema to fill the gap, but the city of Paris insisted on a swimming pool. The design was accepted and the building was opened in 1925.

Original designs from Henri Sauvage

The two men were intensely proud of their revolutionary design. They were so sure were they that it would be copied that they patented the design and created a company to deal with the expected flood of commands, something that never materialised. This is surprising in many ways. The building is still stunning today, dressed in pristine white tiles, with long running balconies interspersed with tall stairways and lift-shafts. Being built largely around a framework of large posts and reinforced concrete it was also a very lightweight structure which required minimal foundations, something that made it relatively cheap to build too. The Paris Metro style tiling ensures that the building is washed clean with each rainfall and it looks to be a thoroughly healthy environment, especially with the swimming pool which today is a municipal facility. It remains a mystery to this day why this was the last such building ever constructed.

The second question to answer is how the designer of a brothel could also be involved in the hygienist movement. Interesting as it may sound today, the two were in fact closely linked. Brothels were legal operations in the early decades of the 20th century, with Sauvage’s creation, Le Sphinx being given permission to open "dans un but de santé publique" (in the interests of public health). Each establishment was closely monitored, with all visitors carefully listed, and regular health checks being obligatory for all who worked inside.

Sauvage himself was a very interesting character. Initially a follower of the Art Nouveau movement and a friend of Guimard, his works were in fact precursors of the modernist movement, albeit with persistent decorative touches. He was an eclectic designer and architect, working on hotels, car parks, and part of the famous Samaritaine shop, always in changing styles that made him very difficult to classify. He died relatively young, aged 58, just two years after his most famous construction was finally terminated. Wild he may have been, but his legacy in the city is a gift of eternal elegance.

On the same theme:
- The story behind the HBMs in Paris
- An unusual school unit