La Grande Arche de la
Défense (also La Grande Arche de la
Fraternité) is a monument and
building in the business district of La Défense
to the west of Paris
, France
. It
is usually known as the
Arche de la
Défense or simply as
La Grande
Arche.
Design and construction
A national
design
competition was launched at the initiative of French president
François Mitterrand.
Danish
architect
Johann Otto von
Spreckelsen (1929–1987) 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, which was
undertaken, began in 1982. After Spreckelsen's death in 1987, his
associate, French architect
Paul Andreu,
completed the work in 1989/90.
At night
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 hypercube (a
tesseract)
projected onto the three-dimensional world.
It has a prestressed concrete frame covered with
glass and Carrara
marble from Italy
and was
built by the French civil
engineering company Bouygues.
The
Grande Arche seen from
the
Arc de Triomphe on the
Axe historique
The nearly-completed
Arche was inaugurated in July 1989,
with grand military parades that marked the biecentennial 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
however, a peculiarity which has been explained by several
theories.
In particular, the architect is said to have
wanted to emphasise the depth of the monument, while the specific
angle was chosen to create symmetry with the similarly-skewed
Louvre
at the other end of the Axe.
However,
it seems the most important reason was mundanely technical: with a
métro station, an RER
station, and
a motorway all situated directly underneath the Arche, the
angle was the only way to accommodate the structure's giant
foundations.
View of the north facade
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. Impressive views of Paris are to be had from the
lifts taking visitors to the roof.
See also
External links