Chapter 2 of 24
Institut De Monde Arabe, Paris, 1981 - 1988. Top: View Across Seine From North-East. Bottom: South Facade With Sorbonne Beyond. View From South-West
In 1981 the first Presidential project was the Arabian Institute. It's a cultural centre with exhibitions, museum, library, auditorium, restaurant, and so on. It's not really an institute. Nobody teaches in this building. It's a very particular site just at the limit of two landscapes of the city. During two thousand years this place was the limit of Paris. In the nineteenth century new suburbs were built on this place, the market of wine and the zoological garden and a station. But just in front, on the opposite side of the street was the University, La Sorbonne, and many, many, very, very old houses of the twelfth century. This building is just at the joint of two urban designs, one very old and one very new, very modern, and this building is exactly like a joint. On one side, the size of the building is exactly the size of the modern buildings of the University, and is built on a line extension of the modem University, and I create a very large and deep pedestrian place, and you can go from the Boulevard Saint-Germain to the Jardin des Plantes by this pedestrian place.