Architectural Assortment

photo Le style et la matière

1722, 1930s, 2010-11

Three buildings, three architectural periods and one construction/renovation project 

to link them as the new improved Postal Bank's headquarters.

from left to right: hôtel de Choiseul-Praslin; postal sorting center;

new office building with a post office on the ground floor

photo Le style et la matière

Oops. Four architectural periods, in fact! This building is located behind the hôtel de Choiseul-Praslin and is part of the enormous project as well. I believe it dates to the 1880s.

views from la rue Saint-Romain



Building Cathedrals

Lavished with ornament from one of the most elaborate decorative vocabularies ever created,

this Caterpillar is a beautiful Gothic machine. Heads turn quizzically  in the museum where it is displayed next to a 15th century maquette of the Saint Maclou Church,

 its nearby neighbor in the streets of Rouen.

This is a maquette of a monumental piece - small but still spectacular,

 at home in this Gothic city. It was created by Wim Delvoye, Flemish artist and spiritual descendant of Brueghel, who has a way - often jarring or disturbingly mocking - of transforming  objects emblematic of the modern world into the registers of traditional art or craft. Here a playful spirit hints at very different ideas of construction, 

and the varying aspirations and values applied to techniques of two ages so very far a part.

It is worth the time to take the time for these concentrated considerations

where standardized meets decorative

  with a good dash of humor. 

Wim Delvoye is exhibiting now at the Musée Rodin

Lecaron Architecture as seen by Jean-Jacques Salvador

Toulaho

If you look at the architect Jacques-Emile Lecaron's website you'll find factual images of the houses he designed over a period of time in the the rue des Fougères, Clamart as well as some of his other notable buildings. Photographer, Jean-Jacques Salvador, has taken these already imaginative constuctions and gone a step further giving them another dimension. An interesting example of one art beckoning to another.
(Click on the photos, they are best viewed enlarged.)

Toulaho is Lecaron's own residence/agency. A contracted form of  "tout là-haut", it's name simply means that it is the house at the top of the street.  If its glass block facade makes a display case for the goings-on inside, there is also a classicly contoured house of green such as a child might draw - square + triangle - that has been encrusted for the dwelling's more intimate spaces. It's a little cabin in the woods that appears to float in the reflection of the trees, or then, some see it as a cuckoo clock fixed to a wall.

Lecaron explains,
"Je l’ai rêvée maison libre, maison qui vole, maison dans les arbres.”

I dreamed of it as a house that was free, a house that flies, a house in the trees.

one of the 7 houses in Clamart

Reflections, shadows, and views through the windows show inhabitants, intimate memories and passing events. Salvador's photos are rarely just interesting angles and light. He reworks the scene, associating it with the  pieces needed to complete the puzzle. There's somtimes a breath of wind, but what blows there?

Take a closer look.

Derrière le Miroir

Where does the the photographer's fantasy take up and the architects's leave off ?

Jacques-Emile Lecaron conceived each architectural design in keeping with the personalities of their owners. Salvador then set up the occupants in the houses according to each individual story.  Both architect and photographer are inspired by the universe of fairy tales as a souce of wonder, mystery, sometimes of fear.

 Tombeau de l'oeil oiseau

This truncated column, also designed by Lecaron,  is a control site for polution levels of the river Seine

located on the Ile Saint-Germain. Salvador's photo consecrates the monument.