Art Deco. Victoria Charles

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      The French section

      Reinforced concrete and its derivatives played such a large part in the Exhibition that a classification based on the implemented materials would not ensure a clearer approach. It would be better to look at the achievements of the various projects, starting with the section’s over plans.

      The French section comprised two main areas, almost perpendicular to each other: one of them marked by the Seine between the Pont de la Concorde and the Alma Bridge, the other one, leading alongside the Avenue Nicolas II, the Alexandre III Bridge, and the alley bisecting the section cutting across the Esplanade des Invalides from north to south. On the quays of the right bank of the river and the Cours-la-Reine, the visitor would successively encounter the foreign and the French pavilions, then the French Village and the colonial pavilions. On the left bank, some more pavilions, miniature toys presented in a model village, the transport gallery, and the amusement park. On the Esplanade, symmetry and variety, order and life, obtained by an extremely considered arrangement of buildings, predominantly assigned to France. Lastly, in order to connect the two parts of the Exhibition separated by the Seine and for fear the public would not be tempted to cross from one bank to the other under the summer sun, the Alexandre III Bridge was transformed, from two lines of shops into a kind of Rialto. It was, like certain bridges of the Middle Ages, a street spanning a river. Dictated by the terrain itself, the general plan mapped out by Charles Plumet left nothing to be desired in terms of clarity.

      The chief architect had focused his main effort on the Esplanade des Invalides. Two contrasting but essential considerations presented themselves: to assure that the splendid view of the dome was not inhibited, but nevertheless avoid the monotony of a long, ordinary avenue. The available space was divided into two parts of unequal length, separated by the two twin pavilions of the Sèvres factory. In the first one, close to the Seine, two galleries masked the entry and the exit of the underground station of Les Invalides. One was dedicated to sumptuous boutiques: Henry Sauvage had created there a striking orchestration of black, red, and gold. The other one, reserved for the foreign sections, had been built in a simple and practical way by Leon Gaudibert and Julien Polti and decorated with discrete paintings by the decorator Camille Boignard. Between these two galleries, twelve buildings of ranging importance formed, bordering a garden, a first unit where, wedged in the four corners, four pavilions intended for the department stores stood.

      The second unit comprised ten pavilions facing each other in a line along the side of the central walkway. As with the latter, it was fenced in on the right and left sides by galleries. A covered promenade skirted them, connecting them to four imposing corner towers and curved around to end at the entrance hall of the Court of Trades. To avoid a repeat of the disorder of previous exhibitions, with an excess and confusion of shadows, the façades of the pavilions were not to exceed a height restriction of 16 feet. This white herd would have been monotonous without some dominant constructions, giving rhythm to the composition. Hence, the towers of Charles Plumet were created, evidently, out of a decorative need. By assigning them as restaurants where one could enjoy the products of four provinces of France, the architect was not unaware that he was exposing himself to criticism for having exalted culinary art in an exhibition dedicated to decorative art in the most important buildings in the ensemble. But he remembered the attraction of American restaurants located on the upper floors of a skyscraper. What to place in these lookouts, if not a place for weary visitors to rest, allowing them to associate the delights of the table with the sight of an urban landscape?

      Once this project was adopted, Plumet carried it out with logic. On the ground floor of each tower, a hall lit by high glass walls was used as a vestibule by the galleries adjacent to the exhibition. In the four corners, octagonal turrets neatly housed staircases and elevators. Above the hall, a service floor, then the dining area, enlarged by four projecting storeys from where the view stretched out as far as the eye could see. Each of them was supported by four impressive columns; between which lead to the kitchens and other services. Such an arrangement of supports was a concession to usual visual expectations. The whole construction was in clinker concrete, less solid than ballast concrete, which facilitated a future demolition. The projecting porches, simply carved, were made of reinforced stone and plywood, which lends itself to restoration works.

      The Court of Trades was made of the same materials and presented, for a very different project, similar qualities: a low construction along the main road of the Esplanade and the dome and a refuge for meditation at ground level. The hall, flanked by two porches whose turrets mirrored those of the towers, connected at the same level with the covered walkway of the Esplanade. However, its linked pillars, without bases but widened at their top by a discrete cushion capital and with a deliberate transition between the eight columns and the lintels, indicated a greater search for elegance. Largely open, like that of the Grand Trianon, but without a curved courtyard, it owed its character to the harmony of the proportions and to the simple decoration obtained by the apparent gaps between beams and joists, with a clearly exposed firmness of the lines. As for the Court itself, it was a more modern cloister without columns or pillars, surrounding a geometrical garden with a fountain at its centre. To offer a discrete setting for the paintings and sculptures, Plumet had simply divided up the awning by the stark, projecting reinforcements. Three constructions were closely related to the composition designed for the Esplanade des Invalides: the library and the theatre which flanked the Court of Trades symmetrically and the twin pavilions of Sèvres, built across from each other on the main road.

      The library, a work of Paul Huillard, could have had the longer, yet more precise name of “showroom of the art of the book”. Readers were not envisaged there, nor their tables, their seats, the quiet atmosphere conducive to their studies, or the shelves for stacking the books. It was not a typical library. But in its hall with its visible framework and few supports, under the light which shone through the broad bay windows at the upper part of the walls, printed pages, engravings, and bindings were presented under the most favourable conditions. The theatre of the Perret brothers and Granet was precisely admired for its elegance at the same time as being “novel and natural”. Architects, such as Paul Jamot, had proposed to create, in the most simple and most economical way possible, “a meeting and contact place between drama and the public”. As at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, the room was arranged in such way that from of every seat, the spectator could easily see the whole scene. Built on a square plan, its architecture encroached on the stage which, divided into three parts by two columns, lent itself to multiple scene layouts. Great care had been taken with the lighting. It fell from a glass ceiling, where the light, of many different colours, was diffused without visible hearth and could enrich the silver-grey rendering with the finest gold. A gallery for electricity, to aid the monitoring, removed “the miserable installation of projectors in the middle of the public”. Placed directly below the ceiling, all around the room, it constituted at the same time the best kind of decoration – one that fulfils a purpose. The same intelligence went into the construction process. For an ephemeral building, Auguste Perret had only implemented expensive СКАЧАТЬ