Notre-Dame: more

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Gothic may have been a straining upwards towards heaven; but it was also awe, dread, domination. The force that a cathedral sought to concentrate in one place was powerful and sometimes dark. Notre-Dame would have been terrifying, outside and in, as much as uplifting; what light the stained glass admitted was dark red and blue, and veiled by a haze of incense smoke; church interiors were obscure and mysterious.

But it's perfectly true that Gothic was about light, even if that light could be dark and red.

Barry Bell was a good friend who died last year in an accident that seemed designed to illustrate the callous absurdity of the universe – not that he’d have seen it like that. In Ottawa I sometimes sat in on his fourth year architecture course. In one session Barry asked the group, ‘Are you guys familiar with the work of Dionysus the Pseudo-Areopagite?’ A sea of hands did not shoot up.

Dionysus was an early Christian writer. In medieval times he was confused with St Denis, the patron saint of the first Gothic church, built by Abbot Suger just outside Paris. For Dionysus, there was a continuous graded path between flesh and spirit, not a stark divide; the highest fleshly state that human sensibility could directly perceive was light, which is very nearly pure spirit. So in contemplating light we get closest to the apprehension of God.

Suger accepted Dionysus/Denis’s theory. Hence "the most radiant windows" (his words) of Gothic churches, affording human beings a near-experience of God's light.

But the Gothic cathedral was also about reflected light – building as solar collector:


It was also about the splendour of mathematical (geometrical) order, mathematical forms being ideal and conveying the true nature of the universe, as distinct from messy sublunary contingency and imperfection:

The sheer prolixity of this, on the other hand, seems to be about something different again:

The suggestion of organic growth is unavoidable. I don’t know what the little nodules are called that run the length of the ribs on the angles of the spires, but they too suggest growth to me, in the form of buds. At the same time the proliferation of freestanding upright structures suggests human, or perhaps angelic, figures. (They are normally seen from far below or at a great distance.)

Alternatively: the spires, which seem all to be 4- or 8-sided, have an aedicule on each face, under a pointed arch. An aedicule is a little house, and is said by architectural historians to stand for the whole house, the whole church, or indeed the Church. So (it doesn’t do to be too literal about this) the spires are symbolic buildings, houses of God.

Clearly I need expert help on this. But life’s too short to read everything, and I seem to be interested in more stuff, not less, as I get older.

Buildings with their guts on the outside

It took me a long time to realise this, but the Centre Pompidou is pure Archigram.

Archigram (http://archigram.net/index.html) were a group of 1960s architects who were trying to think outside the conventions, and in particular to embrace technology. Their schemes included a walking city and the plug-in house: when you needed more space, cranes would deliver add-in units to connect up to the service core.

In 1963-4 I shared a flat with three architecture students who used to bring home the free sheets that Archigram used to put out. For years I saved them (sometimes using them in school), and then, like so much else, decided they were of no further interest and threw them away. (Big mistake.)

http://archigram.net/story.html

(The following year, while I started my teaching job, my equally utopian friends, with a sense of mission caught from their hero Le Corbusier, went out to build streets in the sky -- tower blocks -- for local authorities.)

Archigram projects were characterised most obviously by exposed structure and services. That's exactly what's most striking about the Centre Pompidou by Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers and Gianfranco Franchini (design 1971, opening 1977). These circulation tubes and external walkways could be straight from an Archigram scheme:

as could this exposed structural engineering:

But is this any different?

Those flying buttresses are shamelessly displayed structural supports; the east end of Notre-Dame is a 13th century Pompidou Centre.

But saying they're structural isn't saying they are not expressive. They certainly are that as well; we feel them as well as seeing their purpose. To us (21st C) they perhaps look like the membranes of a web-limbed extra-terrestrial; to an overawed medieval worshipper, what? organic forms, vegetal, straining upward and inward - to support, but also to grasp?

But the Pompidou, too, is expressive. The tubes and pipes and struts and bracings serve functions, but the decision to display them was rhetorical -- they aren't out there because they need to be; there are perfectly good ways of accommodating mechanical functions without making a show of them (and incidentally while protecting them from the corrosion the Pompidou's steelwork is showing).

These elements aren't just being technology; they're saying technology, making a style or language out of its elements. Pretty exciting too, to my mind.

Les Vélos de Paris

To Paris, while the MacBook was having a new logic board fitted (for readers who complain my arguments don't follow).

I can report that the Vélib' scheme (vélos libres, free bikes) is flourishing. Look at all the Stations Vélib' in one central area (detail from free bike map of Paris) (click to enlarge):

Go to a station and this is what you'll find:


If you nicked one you might have a job passing it off as your own. If you stand and watch, this is the sort of transaction you'll see (minus putting your card in the meter, which I failed to catch on camera):
I don't know what a visitor has to do to get a card but it can be done.

So where's the trouble?

This is the Paris public bike scheme: vélib’ (“vélo libre” or “vélo liberté”: free bicycle or bicycle freedom). The photo unfortunately is not by me but from Wikipedia who explain that the bike is free for the first half hour, and then cheap. The chap is I think returning a bike (not necessarily to the same place where he picked it up) or taking one out, using his card. The bikes aren't attractive to steal, and have built in lights that work. I saw loads of them on the street, especially on the plentiful bike lanes. ((http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/Velibvelo1.jpg)

That's one thing out of several that I really liked about Paris (I'm just back, never having properly visited before). Another is the free rein that's given to creative designers, e.g. of street furniture and Christmas decorations. And architects: the Pompidou Centre is awe-inspiring -- no longer need we think of buildings as being about walls. And there's the exhilarating new Musée du quai Branly, devoted to the indigenous people of other continents.

I'm sorry I didn't take my camera. I'd mistakenly assumed that I'd only end up taking tourist snaps. I'm also sorry I can no longer speak French.

My conclusion (after four days): Paris is better than London. Certainly for someone of my age it is, someone who doesn't want to be marginalised by youth.

The people are nice, the atmosphere in public places civilised, bars friendly. I felt comfortable being out at night on my own. If I didn't want a meal in a restaurant I could go in a bar and have a good home-made snack with my drink - the other night it was smoked salmon 'tartine', i.e. a sort of open sandwich on something like pitta bread.

In London pubs used to be comfortable and welcoming; and pubs, not restaurants, often had the best sites, like by the river. (So in the really nice places all you could do was drink, since Brits didn't go in for eating out.) These days many pubs do food, and it's often ok, but most are run by chains, have nothing local about them (including the staff), are noisy (hard surfaces -- a problem for us deafer ones) and are dominated by youth or sports tv or a lethal combination of both. Not an atmosphere than suits me, and I really don't like London pubs any more. There are pubs near me, but I'm not tempted to make any of them my local.

In Paris, on the other hand, I'm sure I could find myself a local bar (or bar/bistro) where I'd feel comfortable. Many unpretentious restaurants are in good locations like near the river. I spent one evening sitting by the window on a quiet and unheritaged side street (quai de Montebello) by the Seine. I couldn't see the river because an embankment was between us, but the buildings in my view were clearly the other side of it, and the few leaves on the trees this side were silvery with light reflected off Notre Dame. I couldn't think of anywhere as pleasant by the Thames in central London -- you'd have to go out to Hammersmith or Greenwich.

What I don't understand, though, is how Paris manages to be so pleasant. Don't they have teenagers? I hardly saw any, in the whole area I walked over, an hour in each direction from the Opéra. I didn't see hoodies or Croydon Facelifts or track suits in any numbers (or, come to that babies or prams). Or litter from drinks and snacks.

Come to that, I didn't see babies either.

Surely all the bad kids can't be out in the notorious banlieus?

Yet Central Paris (the part inside the Peripherique motorway) is full of apartments. As far as I can tell, people live on the four or so upper floors of most of the standard 19th century buildings. So don't families live in them? If yes, don't their teenage children go out and get together?

Perhaps families do live further out, where accommodation is more affordable. But kids from the outskirts of London nevertheless head into the centre for drinking and clubbing: why not in Paris? (It's true that plenty of teenagers also live in central London in council flats - I don't know if there's the equivalent in central Paris.) Perhaps Paris facilities just aren't geared to teenage congregation and drinking? Or perhaps the city just won't stand for kids behaving unpleasantly. Or perhaps the teenagers are doing their homework.

I don't know the answer. Next time perhaps I'll take the camera and look into this more systematically -- perhaps by walking right across central Paris, on more than one line, and then taking some excursions outside the Peripherique. Or read something about the sociology of Paris.