Belly of an architect

Depending on your point de vue, Haussmann’s imperial scheme for Paris created townscape of thrilling regularity or boring uniformity. Whatever; against a backdrop of serene haute-bourgeois perfection, intrusions have always been controversial.

Eiffel’s tower of 1889 was attacked by the intellos of the day. Maupassant, Gounod and Dumas fils thought it a hideous construction of riveted tin. Le Corbusier’s unrealised 1925 Plan Voisin, replacing monuments with motorways, was designed as a shock to the system. And the 1973 Tour Montparnasse, central Paris’s only tall building, is, by general agreement, brainless. The Centre Pompidou of 1977 was a test for taste while the 1989 Bastille Opera is grossly ham-fisted, the last and worst of les grands projets.

And now we have in Les Halles, La Canopée, a vast, rippling, openwork structure comprising 7,000 tons of steel and 18,000 sheets of glass rising 15 or so metres above the 75,000 square metres of ground it covers. This Meccano géant is a dramatic new cloak thrown over the repurposed remains of an unloved shopping mall and a very busy subterranean rail hub five floors below. Cultural collateral includes a ‘centre hip hop’ of 1,400 square metres.

La Canopée’s profile and surface are inspired by the connected pattern made by the crowns of forest trees. Despite the implied sensitivity of this nod to ecology, La Canopée has returned Paris to one of its regular fits of architectural introspection. Although the city can claim an impressive collection of high modern heroes, the French are often inept at, and uneasy with, modern architecture. Just look at La Défense.

Les Halles, in the first arrondissement, was Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris), the site of the city’s ancient and gutsy market. The culinary legacy of this remains only in places like Dehillerin, the world’s best kitchen-equipment shop.