What made Paris look so weird?
Have you ever wondered what makes Paris look so weird? This video will give you a detailed answer with a flashback to 1853. Napoleon III wants to bring air and light to the center of the city and make the city more beautiful with boulevards unifying neighborhoods. Baron Georges-Eugène Haussman is the one who made Napoleon's desire come true. Even though some people call him an imperialist megalomaniac, Haussman was truly a master planner.
This video assesses the process of transforming Paris in different aspects such as overall architecture, green spaces, limestones, water management, and geography.
Check out the video with the timestamp below.
0:20 – Key Persons: Louis Napoleon and the team.
Louis Napoleon and Haussman organized a team including some of the Best Architects, Landscape Designers, and Water Managers to implement radical infrastructure ideas to transform the city of light.
Paris's streets at that time were tight, crowded, and uncomfortable. Therefore, in order to reorder space in the cramped and nasty Parisian streets, first start with the Rivoli route. This grand cross of Paris from north to south and east to west connection. Thousands of homes are traversed by these roadways.
Paris cannot be the city of light with high density. Haussman created the network of the boulevard to direct attention to the focal points.
2:20 – Urban Planning
Bridge: People at that time did not highly prioritize the outlook of streets and buildings. However, Haussman is a different ape highly focused on the building and bridge arrangement. In order to make the bridge appear to be closer to the center and more evenly distributed between the roadways, Hausseman asked David to construct the bridge placed evenly between 2 roads.
Green space: In addition to the green space of the city square and the avenue of new parks, residents in Paris have two huge parks outside the perimeter and two smaller parks inside it.
5:00 – Geology
Local limestone quarries that are used to make gypsum are located between the right and left banks. Limestone quarries on the left bank are greater than those on the right bank. The outlook of different areas in Paris relied on the different local limestone and layer; however, the architecture is materially indistinguishable.
8:16 Park
In fact, Haussman and Louis Napoleon heavily patterned their reconstruction after the distinctive style of London.
Alfond had to make some significant choices to build the park. Railroad tracks were created, a lake was constructed, tens of thousands of workers molded the land, and explosives were employed to sculpt it.
Deschamps, a landscape architect, is the park decorator and deserves special notes for the floral displays he has created with exotic plants and flowers that he has mastered and distributed over the world. Uneven arrangement of varying-sized cells that are curved, encircled by similarly shaped roadways and twisting waterways.
Although not an easy task, the park alone has more than 47 species of trees and shrubs planted to maintain a consistent supply of exotic plant species. Three million trees are produced annually by about 100 people tending to thousands of trees at once.
10:30 – Parisian street furniture
The wallace fountain, one of Paris' iconic features. It is affordable, durable, built of cast iron and is dark green to blend in with the surrounding environment and other street furniture.
A direct supply fountain needs a network that can carry water and this is one of Hausseman's most significant accomplishments. In addition to providing water for pedestrians, the fountain also reflects different seasons and virtues.
13:46 – Conclusion
In the international community, Georges-Eugenie Haussmann is known for his bold urban planning program in Paris. However, 125 years after his death and with his legacy still controversial, his work continues to be questioned.