Paris Conceptions
‘…from the shipwreck I will strive for air and solid ground in a foreign land, a story with the ending, nay the novel in entirety, unknown.’ I feel the not knowing, the lack of foresight before this journey prepared myself as a blank-canvas experiment able to experience blindly without bias. Without predetermined facts I was able to observe freely, decipher on my own the reality of Paris as I lived through it. I was able to classify, categorize, record the experience as I saw, in real time. It was fresh, new, overwhelming almost to the point of petrification; an extraordinary environment to renew my passions for learning and thought and discussion; a jumping off point into the challenge of graduate school; an arming of myself with tools ready to refine my positions and outlooks in regards to architecture and society. It challenged me point to point and I am thankful for it.
‘Paris, the City of Lights, the City of Love, I’d like to prove that; or disprove it, call it what it is, name it myself.’ Paris is certainly a city of very expressive, physical love. Secular romance is quite public and astonishingly carefree. Men are aggressive in their pursuits and quick to fall in love. Women range from beautiful to seductive. Integrity is muddied. However, true romance is not dead; the multitudes of opportunities are everywhere. Wine is good and cheap, parks of all sorts are everywhere, the city is beautiful, and the sun shines. The ‘City of Lights’ is apparent after a day of lite rain and a night clear and cool. Whenever it rains the nightlife glows, streets are full of reflected and refracted neon lights, street lights, head lights. High contrast between nightly darkness and artificial light lying on wet surfaces creates a surreal environment, a dream where you travel between worlds of ambient color swirls. It’s a ‘City of Motion’ always changing and morphing simply because it can and always will, circular or linear or tangent.
‘I will treat this trip as an artist, an architect, and a human. I will document, photograph, write, sketch, play.’ Different forms of recording were used to document the Paris experience; a Moleskine for sketching and observations; a Nikon D60 for photographic expression; a Tumblr for blogging information and photographs on a daily bases; a notebook for personal thoughts to my girl back home. All of these provide a different insert into the French cultural experience, and relate to how I see, feel, think, believe. With not one but many viewpoints on a subject multitudes of aspects can be derived, studied, and learned. These mediums have helped develop thoughts throughout the trip; thoughts of architectural theory, the state of society, of truth and meaning, and beauty. They’ve stated and reiterated facts, questioned and occasionally answered, and delved deep into the self. They hold piece by piece my understanding, not as collective but as different lenses onto the same page.
‘Whenever one steps into something this old it is an incredible feeling; there is hardly anything nearly as ancient in the States. The atmosphere is thick with layer upon layer of century, and you can feel it. The space is special, unique, solid.’ While most of this holds true Paris is certainly a metropolis of the world; a big blended swirl of cultures that keep this city going similar to New York City of the States, and in this it remains the same. It is not unique or special, simply big and grand with its own tourism hotspots and corporation headquarters, busy, crowded, and peopled like every other. One cannot realize French culture in Paris the same way America could not be represented fully in NYC or Chicago. However Paris certainly has its points. As a city developed throughout history it has held itself above the rest always moving forward socially, technologically, architecturally, philosophically. The likes of Louis XIV, Napoleon, Haussmann, Victor Hugo, Gustave Eiffel, Le Corbusier, François Mitterrand, Bernard Tschumi; I believe here it shows France’s specialty, its uniqueness, and its solidity as a culture always advancing.