A quarter born of co-operation
By Phyllis Richardson
Published: January 5 2008 00:39 | Last updated: January 5 2008 00:39
If you don’t live in Paris’s 13th arrondissement, you probably don’t know about it. The streets and even Metro stops aren’t on many maps of the city. And anyone looking to get there by taxi might find that the driver’s response is “n’existe pas”.
But on 130 hectares of land stretching 2.7km along the Seine and well within the city limits, a mammoth redevelopment project has begun to emerge. Where there was once the echoing rattle of train sheds, unfriendly factory buildings and disused industrial plants, there is now the buzz and hum of what is being called Paris’s “nouveau quartier”. It is the most ambitious urban renewal programme that the French capital has seen since the 1860s, when Baron Haussmann cleared away swathes of medieval infrastructure to create grand boulevards and imposing mansion blocks. And, in fact, many say that it is even more revolutionary.
Starting with initial planning in the 1980s and named Paris Rive Gauche in 1996, the project includes a mixture of housing, university campuses, offices and amenities, all of which are now coming to fruition following a dizzying amount of consultation between the township, or mairie, of the 13th arrondissement, citizens’ groups, lobbies (including a powerful pro-environment group), designers, developers, financiers, engineers and dozens of new and established architects.
At a projected cost of €3.2bn, it is being overseen by La Semapa (loosely an anagram for a name translated as “the society for mixed development and planning”), which is composed of 19 different organisations. They are led by Serge Blisko, the local mayor, who in 2001 pushed to make sure the new development would be “a real place for living” with residential, retail and public buildings as well as commercial ones. There are now 5,000 housing units planned for the roughly triangular site, which is bounded by the Seine to the north, Boulevard Massena to the east, the Avenue de France to the south and the Gare d’Austerlitz to the west. Half the homes are designated for lower-income residents and there will be 700,000 sq metres of office space and 10 hectares of parks and gardens. The Jussieu university has been partly restructured to form a new institution called Paris 7-Denis Diderot and the Val-de-Seine School of Architecture occupies a refurbished factory building.
Today, in spite of the forests of cranes and the clatter of the jackhammers, newcomers are already moving in. Sylvain Bourmeau, editor of culture magazine Les Inrockuptibles, is one example. He relocated to one of the new architect-designed apartment buildings earlier this year with his wife, Hélène Borraz, and their two young children, in part because he thinks the new area is a welcome departure from Haussmann’s Paris. “There is not that strict uniformity,” he says, pointing from his third-floor terrace. “Look. There are different colours and shapes, not just buildings that are all calculated to be in exact proportion to the width of the street, et cetera. There is also a mix, social housing, universities and parks.”
Rather than serving as a showcase for one man’s vision, Paris Rive Gauche exemplifies the broader French spirit, he adds. And others more intimately involved in the development agree. “When it works, that collective nature can be really wonderful,” says New Zealand-born, Paris-based architect Brendan MacFarlane of Jakob and MacFarlane, which won the competition to redevelop an old turn-of-the-century dockside depot. “Sometimes having to have so many opinions and agreement can be a nightmare but, when everyone comes together around a table and it works, it can be amazing. I don’t think this is an experience that will be repeatable.”
His building, which features an audacious faceted external structure and landscaped roof terrace, will house cafés, shops, exhibition space for contemporary design and the French Fashion Institute, following its move from the more genteel 16th arrondissment. The aim, MacFarlane says, was to create “a gateway to the 13th”. Other new landmarks in the neighbourhood include the Piscine Josephine Baker, a floating swimming pool docked further along the river to the east, and, just past it, the Passerrelle Simone de Beauvoir, an elegant pedestrian bridge made of two curved, criss-crossing elements that link the Parc de Bercy to the popular MK2 cinema complex and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
The latter, completed in 1995 and one of François Mitterand’s grands projets, was the area’s first signature building but only now is it seen as a part of the city rather than a lone star shining in isolation. Until the adjoining MK2 was built in 2003, “there was nothing here,” explains Borraz, who runs the Paris office of publishing house Thames & Hudson. “It was like no-man’s land. You didn’t want to go past the railway tracks or anywhere near really.”
But that’s part of what made Paris Rive Gauche possible. No houses or structures of cultural significance will be knocked down to accommodate its many parts. Most of the land now being developed was railway storage owned by SNCF and, although some businesses did occupy the site, including moulins (industrial flour mills such as the Grand Moulins de Paris and the Halle aux Farins) and frigo (refrigerated warehouses), they have been re-located outside the city. Those large tracks still in use will be covered with raised, landscaped structures negotiated with pedestrian bridges.
Estate agent François Bernheim of agency L’Adresse, who moved his office from the 16th arrondissement to the “old part” of the 13th at the beginning of 2007, has watched the changes happen first-hand. “Before it was like the frontier here,” he says. “Now it is very interesting. So many more people now using the shops and cafés it’s definitely a good thing. But we can’t keep up. Every day I have people here wanting to buy, students wanting a small studio or attic room to rent. But there isn’t much available at the moment. Personally, I like new architecture. I am happy about working with new buildings. But the new housing is mostly sold by the developers, so it will take a year or two for things to become available.”
The good news is that prices remain reasonable when compared with the rest of Paris. “A few years ago you would have paid about €4,000 per sq metre [in the older part of the neighbourhood] and now it’s more like €6,000 but that’s still like it was in the 16th three years ago,” he says. New apartments, typically sold off plan, start at €8,000-€9,000 per sq metre.
Buyers of the more expensive, larger flats tend to be “bobos”, Bernheim adds, the same “bourgeois bohemians” with middle-class incomes and strong cultural interests that were credited with reviving the Canal Saint Martin neighbourhood in recent years. Investors are less common because the buy-to-let market is undeveloped and “you just don’t make the return”.
Some long-time inhabitants of the older part of the 13th are worried about the new development. “It’s good for business, yes,” says the owner of Bistro Viaduc, a resident of Rue Tolbiac for 20 years, as he pours champagne for customers. “But the prices...”
“All the people who work around here now, they live in the suburbs,” adds one of his waitresses.
Still, there is hope that a comfortable balance of old and new can be achieved and a new community created at least by the time the project is scheduled to finish in 2017. “None of our friends have moved here yet but a lot of them are now asking us to look around for them,” says Borraz. She gazes from her living room window over a vacant lot that will soon become a “prairie-style” garden. “We’re like the pioneers.”
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