Brief reminder of Part 1 (without mistake ) :
Based on a modern replica of the Arc de Triomphe, the Grande Arche is an architectural jewel. Its impressive dimensions make it a cube, with an interior void capable of housing the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.
This building is one of the most difficult projects to undertake, given the constraintes of the subsoil and the impressive size of the building. It was necessary to reconcile the 31 hectares of the La Défense slab, essentialy pedestrianised on the surface, with a subsoil tangled with dozens of kilometres of technical galeries, and also housing most of the car and rail traffic, the RER A, as well as the extension of metro line 1 and the car parks in the business district. It was engineer Erik Reitzel who recommended that the cube should be ofset by 6 degrees in order to respect the undeground infrastructure. This slight misalignement gives the monument a dynamic and gives it volume. In fact, the thickness would have been eliminated if the construction had been in line with the Arc de Triomphe. The project took four years to complete, involving 2000, workers.
Installed in 1989, at the same time as the Grande Arche de La Défense, the ' cloud ' floats at the centre of the cube. It is a set of canvases located between 12 and 22 metres from the ground, suspend by cables attached to the side walls. The structure designed by Johan Otto von Spreckelsen is a whimsical composition to conterbalance the rigoreus geometric forms of the building.
Johan Otto von Spreckelsen and Erik Reitzel conceved the Grande Arche as a 20th-century version of the Arc de Triomphe de l ' Étoile : a monument dedicated to humanity and humanitarian ideals rather than military victories. |
