The image of Haussmann’s Paris has become a model, and this heritage has incapacitated Paris to change or evolve. Paris is frozen in time and its facade contains a necropolis. The commission of the Grand Paris in 2009 concluded that Paris could not become a competitive metropolis without its urban agglomeration, as it cannot provide for the new economy of the twenty-first century, the knowledge economy, within its own limits.
This thesis challenges this conclusion by arguing for the potential of the Haussmannian block, which is hidden behind its facade, and the transformation of Paris itself into a metropolis. By rethinking ideas of norm and exception, and the Haussmannian block as a slab, the project questions the regularization through block parcellation and creation of voids. The projectunderstands the norm as the means to challenge Paris as a model in order to establish Paris as a metropolis of the twenty-first century, a different Grand Paris.
Aerial view of Paris the model, the Necropolis
Visual Manifesto
Section
Ground Floor
Typical Floor Plan
Metropolis
Metropolis
Physical Model
