Amid the city?s countless historic treasures, several modern-day architectural projects are worth seeking out
Sam Lubell
While many world capitals feed off the energy of modernity, Paris is loved because it represents an escape from it. So when most people visit the city, their agenda involves visiting monuments like the Louvre, the H?tel de Ville and Notre Dame. The baby of the group is the Eiffel Tower, built in 1887.
But for lovers of contemporary architecture, Paris can be a surprisingly rich place. The latest crop of French architects is producing some of the best new work the city has seen. They are an eclectic group comfortable taking large risks while still melding the work into an august context. The buildings are a far cry from past examples of modern Paris design. Often the contrast between old and new makes these buildings all the more striking. They are sleek diamonds in an aging rough.
Ministry of Culture
If you walk out of the Louvre and travel less than five minutes north, you can find a gem hidden in plain sight: the architect Francis Soler?s Ministry of Culture and Communication, which he completed about eight years ago. To unify a 19th-century classical building with a contemporary addition, he put a latticelike metallic screen over both. On a gray day, the covering disappears into the sky. On a bright day, it glows. The only public interior space is the ultramodern lobby, with lacy filaments hanging from the ceiling. The ministry offers free information about its cultural events here.
The Louvre
Some modern monuments are right under most tourists? noses, in the city?s historic centre. One of the newest is the Louvre?s Islamic Art Wing, which opened last September. The exhibition space, designed by the French architect Rudy Ricciotti and the Italian architect Mario Bellini, sits under an undulating golden canopy in the middle of the museum?s neo-Classical Visconti Courtyard.
The canopy?s surface is a grid of tensile metallic mesh resembling a flying carpet, a Bedouin tent, a Middle Eastern souk or waves of water, depending on your perspective.
Citro?n
This is one of the most daring new pieces. Manuelle Gautrand (one of the few female architects in the bunch) designed this showroom, called C42, for the automaker Citro?n, which bursts from the street wall of the Champs-?lys?es. Unveiled in 2007, it has a glass-and-steel facade that climbs aggressively and is formed from abstracted chevrons, Citro?n?s symbol. Inside, a stack of revolving turntables showcases the cars.
Docks of Paris
Perhaps the most adventurous of these new modern monuments is the Docks of Paris. Redesigned by the architects Jakob + MacFarlane, the complex was once a turn-of-the-last-century depot for goods hauled by boats on the Seine. Now it?s home to the Cit? de la Mode et du Design, which includes a fashion school, a few hip shops and, on the roof, restaurants and bars.
When you see the Cit? from the nearby Pont d?Austerlitz, its lime-green glass-and-steel armature, which winds and warps its way up and down the length of the old docks, resembles a giant bug perched atop the Left Bank.
Mus?e du Quai Branly
Just a couple of blocks from the Eiffel Tower is a museum that is literally overshadowed by Gustave Eiffel?s masterwork. Jean Nouvel?s Mus?e du Quai Branly, opened in 2006 as a repository of indigenous work from around the world, is an eclectic, nervy composition of bright colours and jutting fragments. Its riverside facade is covered with a planted wall by the French botanist Patrick Blanc. Another wall contains glass covered with forest imagery and large display boxes protruding from the building?s edge like children?s blocks.
A host of other gems
There are many more contemporary treasures if you?re willing to travel even farther out, toward the edge of the city. Essentials include the wow-inducing buildings of the aptly named Paris firm P?riph?riques: in the 17th Arrondissement, to the city?s northeast, is Cardinet Quintessence, a residential building clad in a mesmerising prismatic aluminum skin, and just outside the city is Banlieues Bleues, a factory complex turned music centre in Pantin, a suburb. The list goes on and on.
