A great national design competitionFrançois Mitterrand. Danish architect Johann Otto von Spreckelsen (1929–1987) and Danish engineer Erik Reitzel designed the winning entry to be a 20th century version of the Arc de Triomphe: a monument to humanity and humanitarian ideals rather than military victories. The construction of the monument began in 1985. Spreckelsen resigned on July 1986 and ratified the transfer of all his architectural responsibilities to his associate, French architect Paul Andreu. Reitzel continued his work until the monument was completed in 1989. was launched in 1982 as the initiative of French president
Located just beyond the city limits, on the other side of the Seine from the 17th arrondissement, the Grande Arche de La Défense anchors the eastern end of the historic axis that stretches from the Louvre down the Champs-Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe.
One of the Grands Projets (Mitterrand’s 15 billion franc program to provide a series of modern monuments to symbolize France’s central role in art, politics, and world economy at the end of the twentieth century), the modern triumphal arch is actually a 35-story office building—a monument to capitalism? The area surrounding La Défense is home to modern office towers housing 14 of France’s top 20 corporations.
Von Spreckelsen’s scheme was chosen by Mitterrand in an international competition for its 'purity and strength'. Von Spreckelsen backed out of the project before its completion, reportedly disheartened by red tape and having grown displeased with his own design. He died before its completion.
Tourist guides tout the arch’s impressive dimensions and statistics: each side is 110m long; the arch contains 95,000 square meters of office space. It is clearly the grandest and the most ‘moderne’ of the Grands Projets. Amidst the superlatives, the most pleasant aspect of the scheme is its surprising (and surprisingly subtle) asymmetry; it is rotated six degrees off center of the axis, breaking the symmetry of its position extending the line of the Champs Elysées. The rotation was not part of the original design, but was done so that the piles supporting the structure could avoid the network of tunnels under the site.
The Arche is almost a perfect cube (width: 108m, height: 110m, depth: 112m); it has been suggested that the structure looks like a four-dimensional hypercubetesseract) projected onto the three-dimensional world. It has a prestressed concreteglass and Carrara marble from Italy and was built by the French civil engineering company Bouygues. (a frame covered with
La Grande Arche was inaugurated in July 1989, with grand military parades that marked the bicentennial of the French revolution. It completed the line of monuments that forms the Axe historique running through Paris. The Arche is turned at an angle of 6.33° on this axis. The most important reason for this turn was technical: With a métro station, an RERArche, the angle was the only way to accommodate the structure's giant foundations. From an architectural point of view, the turn emphasises the depth of the monument, and is similar to the turn of the Louvre at the other end of the Axe historique. station, and a motorway all situated directly underneath the
In addition, the Arche is placed so that it forms a secondary axe (axis) with the two highest buildings in Paris, the Tour Eiffel and the Tour Montparnasse.
The two sides of the Arche house government offices. The roof section, exploited by Stephane Cherki, is an exhibition centre. The vertical structure visible in the photograph is the lift scaffolding. Views of Paris are to be had from the lifts taking visitors to the roof. (After a non-injury accident in the elevators in April of 2010, the Department of Ecology, owner of the roof of the Grande Arche, has decided to permanently close the computer museum, restaurant, and viewing deck. Access to the roof is still possible via the elevators in the north and south walls, but they are closed to the public.
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