INTRODUCTION
This third, main field study was carried out at Les Berges de Seine in Paris in September 2014 and in May 2015.1 It is an investigation of a public domain that is primarily dedicated to leisure, fitness and the sheer pleasure of social interaction. It is a temporal urban arrangement with a high lev-el of management associated to it, where a comprehensive machinery of architectural features and specialised artefacts strategically support a rich selection of events and supervised (and non-supervised) activities.
Les Berges de Seine – ‘the Banks of the Seine’ – is a public pedestrian space located on the Left Bank of the Seine, extending from the Musée d’Orsay (the Emmarchement stairs) and Pont de l’Alma in the west. The area was reclaimed from motorised traffic in 2012 to become a major pub-lic space. Bertrand Delanoë, who was mayor of Paris at the time, declared
1 See Chapter 3 for further information on ’field study design’ details.
that he was “committed to transform the road along the riverbank into a place of life, beauty and culture”.2 The Berges embankment area covers a stretch of about 2.3 km, and its width varies from roughly between 20-40 meters. The two-lane riverbank road (Georges-Pompidou Riverside Ex-pressway) that formerly occupied the space was built between 1961-1967 and was one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares – with about 2 200 vehicles passing every hour – until the project’s launch in 2012. When the Berges project was completed in June 2013, general project coordinator Annette Poehlmann stated that “The idea behind Les Berges was to re-appropriate the riverbank and to create a little island of peace, pleasure and leisure in the heart of Paris”.3
The bureaucracy and coordination of all activities at Les Berges de Seine is conducted by a specialised management organisation – Artevia.
The design of artefacts, such as seating facilities and multipurpose contain-ers, is done by Franklin Azzi architecture. Bureau Bas Smets is responsible for the landscaping, and the signage is designed by Change is Good. Sport and recreation facilities are managed by Carat Sport. The former director of lille3000,4 Fusillier Didier, is in charge of the event design.
The initial investment for planning and construction work was some-where between 26.6 million euros5 and 40 million euros,6 and the annual budget is about 5 million euros.7 The general project coordinator Annette Poehlmann8 claims that the figure is 35 million euros, including “the
in-2 Bertrand Delanoë cited in NY Times 7 Aug, 2012.
3 (www.nytimes.com) 29 July 2014.
4 lille3000 is an institution that has been organising extensive cultural projects in the city of Lille since 2006. The institution is a legacy from 2004, when Lille was the European Capital of Culture (alongside Genoa in Italy).
5 New York Times, July 2014 6 The Guardian, August 2012 7 New York Times, July 2014
8 Annette Poehlmann is the general project coordinator at Les Berges, employed by Artevia, which manages the Les Berges de Seine project. I interviewed Annette Poe-hlmann at the site on 19 May 2015 (2pm-3:30pm). Further conversations were had via mail correspondence.
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vestment of the works done by the City of Paris on the Left and Right riv-erbanks in 2012 (7M€) plus 5M€/year (2012-2015) for Artevia (including the investment for our facilities and programme)” (Poehlmann, Annette.
Personal interview. Paris, 19 May 2015). The project was politically debat-ed and the conservative opposition forcefully argudebat-ed to keep the express-way. As a transformation sanctioned in the socialist mayor’s office, it is highly sensitive to shifting political winds. The contract guaranteeing the temporary use of the bank space runs until 2016, but due to a precarious financial situation, the current plan is to terminate the project in Decem-ber 2015. The future use of the space after 2015 is unclear.
s a predecessor to the Les Berges project, Bertrand Delanoë9 introduced the Paris Plages project in 2002. Artificial sandy beaches were installed on the lower banks of the river for four or five weeks every summer. Potted palm trees, beach chairs and tonnes of sand offer a Mediterranean experi-ence in the centre of Paris. The beaches add a new temporary spatial cate-gory and social event to urban public life. The Paris Plages project was very well received by Parisians and has been mimicked by other cities all over the world,10 offering city dwellers a coastal holiday, or at least an urban beach experience, close to home and free of charge.
Les Berges de Seine is situated at the lower quay area and is accessed by just a few stairs and ramps, which are located rather far apart. The several metres-high retaining wall that supports the upper quay separates the low-er area and detaches it from adjacent tourist attractions, such as the Musée D’Orsay, the Eiffel Tower and the Champ du Mars. The retaining wall simultaneously visually connects the space to the river and to the view of the Right Bank. The protected and fairly secluded setting gives les Berges an extraordinary character as a tranquil public haven – a fragment of rather serene urbanity – despite its very central location in the city.
Les Berges de Seine organisation invests heavily in material agency to encourage and inspire public life. The site is highly programmed and most of the intended activities are supported by a multitude of artefacts – mate-rial devices intended to initiate a vast selection of play and leisure activities, entertainment and sports. The design of the space can be perceived as a rather desperate or opportunistic way to establish a public domain, filled to the brim as it were with various inviting (or pleading) features. The place can be reminiscent of an amusement park in its anxious desire to please citizens and tourists by offering something for everyone.
9 Bertrand Delanoë, the former socialist mayor of Paris, promoted many public space projects during his tenure between 2001-2014. His strong support for bicycling as a mode of transportation resulted in improved bicycling infrastructure and the Vélib bike-sharing scheme, which was implemented in Paris in 2007.
10 John Lichfield in The Independent, 15 April 2010.
Because of the scarcity of access points and its secluded location, Les Berges represent a target space, relatively detached from the typically con-gested and crowded Parisian urban life. Most visitors seem to come here to stay for a while, not just to pass through. The common pace is slow, and people stop regularly to enjoy the views, look at objects or sit down to read, have a picnic or just people-watch. It is clearly not an obvious shortcut to certain hot spots, although the stretch could certainly be chosen as an al-ternate route. The linear orientation of most artefacts in the Berges space allow for uninterrupted movement along the river. The linearity supports the idea of a continuous strolling space whilst also facilitating jogging, skating and bicycling. Stretches of urban flâneur space echo a Parisian tra-dition, recalling the boulevards of the 19th century and the bourgeoisie practice of walking for pleasure (Benjamin 1999).
Urban Space Typology
Les Berges is situated in close proximity to grand landmarks such as the Seine, the Eiffel Tower, the great museums (Musée du Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, etc.), the Tuileries Garden and the National Assembly. Although Les Berges forms part of the large-scale infrastructure by means of archi-tecture and culture as well as politics, the space has a mundane atmosphere and is characterised by rather low-key artefacts. The space is materially programmed to support multiple activities that are not obviously asso-ciated with traditional public domains. Les Berges can be described as a seamless hybrid of multiple urban types. The central, yet secluded loca-tion renders the space undetermined regarding use, and its posiloca-tion within traditional urban typologies is ambiguous. From some aspects it can be regarded as a transitional or ‘liminal space’ (Stevens 2007a:73ff.; Hajer &
Reijndorp 2001:128ff.; Zukin 1991; Sennet 1990), but it can also be seen as a major public domain – a target space at which to arrive and a site for great events. Given its very central location in Paris, a traditional plan-ning approach would suggest a fairly neutral and representative design, open for unplanned citizen appropriations, like comparable bank spaces along the Seine. Les Berges is a rather odd creature though; it is as much a
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playground and a park as a training facility and a recreational retreat. This highly programmed and functionally diversified space can be associated with urban parks and seafront esplanades as well as with contemporary urban spaces, such as themed playgrounds, farmers’ markets and centres for mixed urban sports such as parkour parks, climbing walls, skating and bmx facilities.
Les Berges de Seine belongs to an emergent urban type that is intend-ed for leisure, entertainment and play, more than lending itself to tra-ditional commercial activities, civic manifestations and political protests.
These new urban publics are designed to meet the desires of metropolitan citizens and tourists with diversified and sophisticated requests regarding ambience, food/drinks, activities for children, comfort level and a variety of events. The challenge seems to be the low-key design, a fine-tuned level of programming fused with originality, amusement and safety, a concept that may fit and attract a wide contemporary urban audience.
A Themed Urban Riverfront
Les Berges can to some extent be regarded as an example of a global trend of cities competing with each other through commodified urban architec-tures, interesting experiences and high-end public spaces (Hajer & Reijn-dorp 2001:49ff.; Sorkin 1992; Zukin 1995; Boyer 1994). Curated leisure and play have become the guiding themes and the main features for some key contemporary urban spaces in many prominent cities. Michael Sor-kin (1992) as well as Maarten Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp (2001) have commented on this as an effect of the growing ‘experience market’, signi-fying how cities compete via theme park experiences. Additionally, and somewhat contradictorily, in some cases this tendency can be interpreted as a general critique of the current commercialisation and privatisation of urban public domains.
Striking urban renewal projects, usually spinning various travelling de-sign concepts, are carried out to attract local citizens, tourists, retail and international business; all aimed at a growing and dynamic labour market, producing wealth for the city via increased taxation. Normally these proj-ects are swarming with consumption opportunities and essentially they signify an ambition to primarily collect people who are able to consume.
The large investments that are made in these urban renewal projects rarely target financially weak groups of citizens. In this sense, Les Berges deviates from the norm and offers a setting where everything is free, except food and drinks. Les Berges de Seine can, however, still be perceived as an effort to brand the city as dynamic and progressive, but also as safe and well managed.