Holes at Les Halles
Michael Parrott
Paris It is only a story about holes, but all Paris is talking about it. There is the big hole in the middle of the former meat, fruit and vegetable market of Les Halles and there are a couple of hundred little holes in the capital's oldest square, the Place des Vosges. The big hole has been there ever since August 1974 when French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing decided to suspend the construction of yet another modern office block and devote the space to a landscaped garden; the little holes have been around only a few weeks, since the city authorities uprooted 172 elms suffering from the Dutch elm disease. What has been preoccupying everyone here is what should be done with these holes.
The issue surrounding the small holes in the seventeenth-century Place des Vosges was a relatively simple one, but that did not stop feelings running high. The city authorities, backed by the local inhabitants, wanted to fill them up with young lime trees, thereby ensuring shade in the heat of summer and a touch of green to what has become a rather gloomy square, but for the traditionalists here was a God-sent opportunity to restore the treeless setting the square had enjoyed when it was completed for the then dead Henri IV in 1612. Originally a parade ground used for jousts, duels and tournaments, the 'place royale' as it was then called was only covered with foliage at the end of the eighteenth century.
The campaign for filling the little holes with earth instead of young lime trees was led by the socialist daily Quolidien de Paris, but the rest of the French press soon jumped on the bandwagon and even the French President was reportedly behind the treeless solution. With the cold weather making planting impossible and a Quotidien de Paris referendum showing 55 per cent support for its cause, the treeless lobby looked as if it might win the day.
But if the historical purists were probably right in claiming that the buildings with their fine arcades would be seen to much better advantage without trees in the middle, they had not taken into account the current Parisian obsession with greenery.
Ever since they realised that the French capital possessed less parks and trees than virtually any other city in the world, the Parisians have been defending every piece of greenery as if it were their very life blood. And after suffering for almost a decade at the hands of unfeeling property developers, they were not going to be strait-jacketed by the demands of a few aesthetes. With the obvious approval of the locals, the city authorities were quietly filling up those little holes—this week—with lime trees.
The big hole in Les Halles is a much more complicated affair, but once again greenery is at stake. The wishes of the local inhabitants were hardly considered when President de Gaulle first decided to move this bustling street market out of the congested centre of Paris to La Villette, Garonor and Rungis, while intellectuals, artists and conservationists had little more success when they suggested an arts and entertainment area and fought for the retention of Baltard's magnificent pavilions. But by the time President Georges Pompidou died two years ago, an elephantine modern cultural centre the size of Notre Dame was springing up on the Plateau Beaubourg and the former market area was being excavated to make way for a commercial centre and office block. After La Defense, Montparnasse, Les Fronts de Seine and the Place d'Italie, the property developers seemed to have come out top again.
But ever since Giscard won the presidency, he has tried to put the clock back and win what one might call grass-root support. The left-bank expressway has been cancelled and a garden is to be built in the area where work had already started, the building of skyscrapers has been virtually banned, an artists garden saved from the developers and the old market of Saint Germain preserved, but the French President must be cursing that hole.
For one thing his spectacular gesture has proved rather costly. By vetoing the planned trade centre building, Giscard will only add 3.7 acres to the 11.1 acres of green space envisaged under the original development plan. But that extra greenery is going to cost the state and Paris ratepayers some 35 millions sterling. The Parisians may eventually appreciate the munificence of their new sun king, but his failure to consult anyone, even the Paris councillors, has not gone down well here and now that the President has indicated his preference for the classic design of Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the gardens of Les Halles are to be more a monument to Giscard than a reflection of the wishes of the local inin habitants.
With Bofill and his fellow architects still squabbling about what to do with the hole, the operation is being increasingly compared to the 100 million sterling gaffe De Gaulle made when he modernised the La Villette slaughterhouses. (Ironically now that they have been closed down, a battle royal is developing there over how much of the 133-acre space should be turned into park land as opposed to office development.) But if the Les Halles project is becoming an expensive manifestation of an almost royal patronage. Giscard is obviously determined to leave a less brash monument to his presidency than Pompidou did with his huge contemporary arts centre due to be completed later this year, not to mention the right-bank expressway which has just been named after him.
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