ANATOMY OF A LANDMARK
Tu Delft
Complex Project Studio | Seminar
2017 | 2018
Haussmann’s Renovation of Paris
Georges Eugène Haussmann,
1853-1870
Paris, France
Built
“I had in front of me one of the most extraordinary men of our time; big, strong, vigorous, energetic, and at the same time clever and devious, with a spirit full of resources[...] Full of audacity and skill, capable of opposing expedients with better expedients, traps with more clever traps, would certainly succeed.”
Victor de Persigny, France’s interior minister
Epoch
The French capital was overcrowded, dirty and riddled with disease. The standards regarding light, air, clean water and sanitation were not accessible to the majority of population. Based on the emperor’s will, the Haussmann’s renovation project aims both to solve these problems and exhibit the new splendour of the city, known from that moment on as the “City of Lights”.
Relevance
The city became the tool to control movement and behaviour of the masses. All its elements and their disposition, from the imperious boulevards to the little cafes, were designed to invigorate a capitalistic system that was the bedrock of the new society. In order to obtain that, large part of the existing city needed to be completely remodeled.
Through the lens warfare, the project is represented as a totalitarian and destructive machinery, not caring about the impact of its actions. People does not have to know the intention behind it, but they have to act inside the system in order to keep it alive.
The representational tools should represent the theme of the machinery city through different points of view:
The City: technical aspect of the machine of control in the reproduction of the city.
The Man: display of feeling of dismay, generated by the act of appropriation of the new city and development of classes.
The People: through the form of Manifesto, expression of the radical will of the people to shift the present situation.
Machinery
Machine uses forces and control movement to perform an intended action.
Its components and operations penetrates into the deepest parts of the system, controlling the actions of its members.
Nothing can to be out of place.
No one can act outside the system.
Everything has to work towards the same goal.
The aim of the Hausmann’s project of renovation was not only to exhibit the new splendour of the city but especially to create a system of control that regulated and governed citizens’movement, social status, behaviour and way of life.
The machinery of control operated on different levels: first of all, the creation of big boulevards allowed to rapidly stop civic riots and any attempts of revolution against the emperor, as happened in 1848. The boulevards were not only a tool for military strategy but also the result of a design that tent to a capitalistic view, a place of consumism where the new lifestyle of the flaneurs could be exhibited. Furthermore, the extension of infrastructure, comprehending new streets, water and gas system, increased the development of new private real estate and therefore made it possible for production and profit to grow.
This system of control was evident both on the city scale, where the development of the new city completly disregarded the existing urban configuration, but also on the building scale, where the division of floors reflected the social status of the inhabitants.
In this perspective, the Haussmann’s project succeeded to create machines for living, controlling and altering the behaviour of its citizens. The micro operations implemented all over the city subtly imposed a new code of behaviour: Paris became the new great center of consumptions, tourism and pleasure, marked out by the countless cafes, restaurants, street lights, public urinals, department stores, and the grand expositions. The overall representation of these elements erased the past identity of the city, and especially the one of the citizens, creating a new way of living related to the bourgeois class, showing the importance and richness of the French capital. Inside this machinery, people lost their identity, becoming only elements that operated depending on what the system required them to do: they did not follow their will but the will of the system.
Dismay
Fear and sorrow will fill people’s spirits.
Separation and differentiation are essential.
There is no possibility for discussion or agreement.
In order to regenerate its own image, the previous identity has to be erased.
The process has to start immediately.
Through a parisian citizen point of view, the consequences of the Haussmann project resulted into a feeling of dismay, an awareness of losing the past identity and way of living to the detritment of the new bourgeois image of the capital. The reason behind this feeling was the sudden and unexpected realisation of the project. This was implemented without any sort of discussion or agreement between the emperor and the population; this lack of dialogue is furthermore represented in how the new city completely disregarded the old city. The new boulevards appeared as an aggressive and destructive feature of the project that cut through the existing urban tissue, overlaying and imposing themselves on the history of Paris. The demolition of the past was essential in order to regenerate the image of the city, that had to appear as a representation of the values of the bourgeois class and not anymore as a representation of the masses.
Capitalism strongly influenced the nature of the project, controlling the city’s territory through the diversity of socio-economic classes. In fact, the outcome of the Haussmann’s project of renovation was twofold: firstly the bourgeois appropriation of the city, that, unconcerned about the existing reality of Paris and the other social classes, appeared as a top down decision; secondly, the implementation of a system of separation between the masses and the aristocrats, creating a subordinate relationship between the two of them. On one hand, the new prevailing identity of the bourgeois was reinforced and embodied by the idea of the flaneurs: their way of living represented the image of the new city. On the
other hand, the masses constituted the labour force of the city: servants, industry workers, construction and sewer maintenance workers are just few examples that show their subordination towards the bourgeois class.
It was evident how these two groups, the ‘flaneurs’ and the ‘servants’, did not act as individual groups with but rather each one of them accomplish a different role inside the machinery.
Revolution
Revolution towards the machine is claimed by the people.
Reobtain what was destroyed by the machinery is the leitmotif.
Old identity. A past way of life.
Violence is the only tool to shift the paradigm.
Popular control is the vision.
It was only through the sudden awareness of the consequences of the project that the citizens of Paris decided to get back what was radically erased, the past way of living of its inhabitants and the old identity of the city.
The resistence movement counterposed an extreme backlash towards Haussmann’s plan: revolution. As individuals, people were merely insignificant elements with no influence in the machinery system, but as a unity they could create the power to overturn the system. In contrast to the top down interventions of the project for Paris, the revolution was born as a bottom up actions, not only against the government
but also against the capitalistic machinery of control itself. The goal was to shift the paradigm of the power into a new system of government based on socialistic popular control.
As the destructive force of the Haussman’s plan befell on the historical city, the rebellion hit out at the new Paris with the same violence, that was the fundamental mainstay of the movement. In fact, due to the machinery’s inherent structure, created to prevent riots and revolution, any resistance against this system required brute ferocity. People were forced to take up arms.
Moreover, people’s fundamental purpose was to destroy the ideology of modern Paris, based on the bourgeois’ identity, in all its representations and form of manifestation. The new symbols of the city had to be torn down and demolished in order to eliminate any traces of the established ideology and prove popular power over them: people’s answer to Haussmann’s project was embodied in the symbolic acts of dismantling the machine.