Yesterday I spent the day working on the first of the series of essays. It's complete, so to speak, although I think that there's more depth and inisght I can give to the subject matter. Right now its essentially about how Paris solved the overcrowded cemetary issue by exhuming corpses and putting them in the abandoned caverns below Paris. It's definitely thinking outside the box, and the resulting catacombs are one of the most interesting places you can go in Paris, in my opinion. However just that much explanation isnt worthy of its own essay, and I really have to look more into the implications of such a move, and how that has more significant architectural and urban consequences. I wonder what else we could put down there?
So with one essay more or less finished I'm ready ot move on to the next one - the Grands Projets. Essentially, there were seven buildings constructed in the 80's and 90's by then president Francois Mitterand. From my view, they're all really damn big. So I would like to look at scale in contemporary parisian architecture, but also historically, since the French have been building big for a long time. Also what the use of scale means, architecturally and symbolically, and if the treatment of these monstrous buildings is consistent with their messages. It's a chance to actually do a bit of criticism and diving into a bit of theory on them. So that will take me through sometime early next week, hopefully.
We've had a few days of rain on and off here, so it's been tougher to go out, or at least tougher to get myself to go out. Today I officially pass the 1/3 marker of this trip, and although there's plenty of time left, it still makes me kind of nervous. I still haven't really developed a system for analysing the city.
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