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The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School College of the Liberal Arts PARISIAN LANDSCAPES: PUBLIC PARKS AND ART URBAIN, 1977-1995 A Dissertation in French by Amanda Shoaf Vincent © 2010 Amanda Shoaf Vincent Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2010 The dissertation of Amanda Shoaf Vincent was reviewed and approved* by the following: Monique Yaari Associate Professor of French Dissertation Adviser Chair of Committee Jean-Pierre Le Dantec Professor of Architecture Ecole Nationale Supérieure d‘Architecture de Paris La Villette Special Member Sarah Rich Associate Professor of Art history Willa Z. Silverman Professor of French and Jewish Studies Allan I. Stoekl Professor of French and Comparative Literature Jean-Claude Vuillemin Professor of French Director of Graduate Studies, Department of French and Francophone Studies Bénédicte Monicat Professor of French and Women‘s Studies Chair, Department of French and Francophone Studies *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ii ABSTRACT Having evolved from of a profession that has undergone profound transformations since the beginning of the century, renewed municipal political and administrative structures, and Parisians‘ own expressed wishes for more and improved green space, the large urban parks created by the City of Paris from 1977 to 1995, including the Parc André-Citroën, Parc de Bercy, and Promenade plantée, dramatically altered perceptions of urban landscape design potential. Aesthetically complex, theoretically sophisticated, and mindful of their social role within the city, these parks were developed by architects and landscape architects selected through high- profile design competitions and were grafted into sectors of the city undergoing renovation and renewal. As such, they provided a true alternative to the uniformity, functionalism, and traditional style that had been the trademark of the city parks service, laboring under the weight of Second Empire‘s style municipal and the reductive spatial grammar of Modernism. Rather, these parks offered fresh approaches to the garden tradition and reoriented the symbolic geography of the city. This dissertation proposes a cultural analysis of Parisian public parks during the period 1977-1995 with the aims of analyzing these parks from an aesthetic and cultural point of view, and exploring their impact on broader questions of cultural memory, image construction, and contemporary urban design, using this phenomenon as a prism through which to better understand contemporary France. My formal and contextual analysis of these parks is situated at the intersection of two fields: French studies and landscape and garden studies. The former, which draws methods and perspectives from the cultural history of the present as applied to the everyday urban environment, provides an understanding of the socio-cultural context and political stakes of urban park creation. The latter offers concepts and theories addressing society‘s culturally- mediated relationship to nature, drawing on related disciplines whose shared purview is the articulation and qualitative perception of space, such as the visual arts, architecture, and cultural geography. Both fields practice poststructuralist readings of visual culture. This study is ultimately conceived as a contribution, through the object park, to French cultural studies, for which the city, public space, the environment, and ecology are subjects of increasing scholarly interest. The study shows how each of the three parks, by using traditional stylistic elements devalued or abandoned in Modernist green space design, and by engaging with history and memory as well as with current contexts, become heterotopic sites (to borrow Michel Foucault‘s terminology). Rather than owing this otherness to their soothing vegetal elements in contrast to the roil of the surrounding city, the symbolic and poetic nature of these parks predominates over nature and its representation, so that they stimulate an allusive, metaphorical, or allegorical experience. This quest for an aesthetically and symbolically engaging experience in the urban context resonates with Bernard Huet‘s vision of l’art urbain, meaning urban design grounded in principles of interdisciplinarity, a heightened appreciation for the city as the site of everyday life, and sensitivity to perception and representation within the urban landscape. The choice to project complex aesthetic and ecological sensitivity into the public sphere while taking up historical themes and styles in a critical manner suggests a possible definition of a French postmodern garden. This turn to the qualitative as part of an effort to reconcile a storied past with not just the concrete demands of the present but also the contemporary imagination is central to urban design and architecture in Paris as in urban centers around the globe. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures……………………………………………………………………………. x Acknowledgements…………..…………………………………………………………. xv Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………… 1 Research questions ………………………………………………………………. 2 Background………………………………………………………………………. 4 Object…………………………………………………………………………….. 9 Typology ……………………………………………….………………………. 12 Approach: Parks as Cultural Objects ……………………………..……………. 18 Methodology ………………………………………………………...…………. 21 Overview of Chapters ………………………………………………………….. 25 Introduction ……………………………………………………………. 25 Chapter One: Situating the Parks….……………………………………. 25 Chapter Two: The Parc André-Citroën ………………………...………. 26 Chapter Three: The Parc de Bercy …………..…………………………. 27 Chapter Four: The Promenade Plantée ...………………………………. 27 Conclusion …………………………..…………………………………. 28 Chapter One: Situating the Parks ………………………………………………………. 30 Introduction …………………………………….………………………………. 31 In the Beginning was Alphand …………………………………………………. 32 Paris‘s Parks, 1900–1939 ………………………………………………………. 36 Garden Design in the Early Twentieth Century ………………………..………. 37 World War II, Reconstruction, and Les Trente Glorieuses ……………………. 39 Paris in the Trente Glorieuses ………………………….………………………. 46 iv Crises and Transitions of the Mid-1970s ………………………………………. 50 1975: The New Parisian Government …………………………….……………. 54 The New Landscape Architects ……………………………..…………………. 59 The Competition for the Parc de La Villette……………………………………. 65 The First Steps to Renewal: Studies and Evaluations .…………………………. 69 Methods ……………………………………...…………………………………. 70 Findings about Existing Parks …………………………………………………. 72 What Do Parisians Want? ……………………………...………………………. 73 Models for Parks …………………………………………….…………………. 80 Proposed Changes ………………………………………...……………………. 84 The Return of the Garden in Municipal Discourse .……………………………. 90 The Return to the Garden in Landscape Architecture …………………………. 92 Landscape as an Academic Field ………………………………………………. 94 Conclusion ……………………………………………………..………………. 95 Chapter Two: The Parc André-Citroën ……………………………….………………. 100 Introduction ………………………………………...…………………………. 101 A Brief Description: The Neighborhood …………………..…………………. 105 The Jardin Blanc ………………………...……………………………. 106 The Jardin Noir ……………………….………………………………. 107 The Central Lawn …………………….………………………………. 108 The Jardins Sériels ……………………………………………………. 110 Other Observations ……………………………………….......………. 113 A History of the Park Design Process: From Factory to Park ...……...………. 114 The Urban Design of the Site …………………………………………. 116 The Brief …………………………………………...…………………. 119 v The Competition ……………………………………...………………. 122 The Outcome ………………………………………….………………. 127 The Laureates: Gilles Clément and Patrick Berger ...…………………. 128 Berger and Clément‘s Project …………………………...……………. 130 The Laureates: Allain Provost and Jean-Paul Viguier ………………... 133 Provost and Viguier‘s Project ..…….…………………………………. 136 The Synthesis …………………………………………………………. 139 Evaluations upon the Park‘s Opening …...……………………………………. 142 Symbolism ……………………………………………………………………. 143 Les Jardins sériels: Under the Sign of Alchemy? ………….…………………. 144 Voids …………………………………………………………………………. 146 Smoothness …………………...………………………………………………. 148 The Contrapuntal Design of the Park …………………………………………. 150 A Closer Examination of the Jardin en Mouvement .…………………………. 151 Integrating the Jardin en Mouvement into Traditional Park and Garden Discourse ………...……………………………………………………. 153 Philosophical Background for the Jardin en Mouvement: Robert Pogue Harrison ………………….……………………………………………. 155 The Jardin en Mouvement as a Redefinition of the Gardener‘s Role ….157 The Role of the Garden Visitor ………………………….……………. 162 The Jardin en Mouvement and ―Third Nature‖ ………………………. 163 Third Nature and Tiers Paysage ………………...……………………. 168 The Jardin en Mouvement: Reconciling the Ecological and the Aesthetic ……………...………………………………………………. 171 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………. 176 vi Figures ………………...………………………………………………………. 178 Chapter Three: Bercy's ―Jardin de la Mémoire .………………………………………. 218 Introduction ……………………...……………………………………………. 219 The Parc de Bercy and Its Neighborhood ………………………….…………. 220 Pertinent Moments in the Site‘s History ………………………...……………. 225 The Redevelopment Process: Policies and Projects …………………..………. 226 The Competition Brief ……………………..…………………………………. 229 The Competition Finalists ………….…………………………………………. 232 Sub-Urbanism and the Winning Design ...……………………………………. 234 Memory and Presence ……………...…………………………………………. 237 The Design Team‘s Concept of Memory ..……………………………………. 239 Ruins and the Picturesque ……………………………………….……………. 241 Alois Riegl‘s Definition of the Modern Monument .…………………………. 245 Ruins, Authenticity and Nostalgia …………………………………………….