A museological approach of an urban project: Parisian cultural institutions as urban actors

Abstract

Considering the most recent contemporary historical, geographical and social displacements of the places of power have been taken into consideration through the role of the culture and arts on them. The aim of this research is to examine, from the perspective of the urban historiography of Paris, an analyse of the trajectory and transformation of the city by the means of its museums' institutions. Paris has suffered from important processes of acceleration and changes to become the contemporary capital that it is nowadays. The city counts with the precedent of its great Haussmannian transformation into a modern city and the historical three concentric growth of its city walls perimeter and the later succession of up to six international exhibitions (between 1855 and 1937). However, after the impasse produced by the two war periods, a new urban and political project - still present in our days - was built up based on the cultural institutions. Great new cultural infrastructures were designed for expecting areas and terrain vagues, most of them with a proved level of change, at the Seine riverbanks. They follow the Louvre museum historic model of implantation. Meanwhile, the historical inner Marais district experimented a deep restoration and a reuse process, with cultural institutions as the main actors. Even more, Beaubourg void was pointed as an opportunity for a decisive change for the whole city. Cultural insertions of the opportunity spaces beside the river have definitely established Paris as a top rank cultural destination. Heading the cultural tourism rates at a global level, its historical heart - The City Island, nowadays being under research conducted by the French architect Dominique Perrault, with the horizon of a 25-years renovation project, the Right Bank (with the French Cinematheque, the Arsenal Pavilion, Louvre Museum, Decorative Arts Museum, The Orangerie, The Grand Palais, The Palais of Tokyo and the Palais of Chaillot) and the Left Bank (counting with the French National Library, The Arab World Institute, the Orsay Museum, the Invalids Hospital, Quay Branly Museum and the Eiffel Tower), sum up to the most relevant museums' institutions and exhibition spaces of the city. Thus, the research will deepen in the urban strategy for the choice of the museums and cultural institutions as the decisive architectural actors for the renewal of the Parisian urban landscape. The role of their architectures, intimately associated with their performing use, will be critically examined.