Lecture: Architecture and Urbanism of 20th Century Paris

Silesian Gallery, Těšínská 35, 710 00 Silesian Ostrava
October 16, 2008, at 6:00 PM

The Secretary of the Institute of Art History at Charles University in Prague, PhDr. Richard Biegel, Ph.D., will introduce us to the history of Parisian urbanism in the 20th century. Contemporary Parisian architecture represents a constant conflict between two fundamentally opposing concepts. On one side is the Paris of boulevards, created by Professor Baron Hausmann for Napoleon III in the second half of the 19th century, which we mostly perceive today as the very essence of the city. On the other side are the radical projects that aimed to transform Paris into a city of high-rise buildings, highways, and green spaces, best symbolized by Le Corbusier's radiant city project from the early 1920s. The conflict between these two "parallel" cities is still evident in Paris, and it cannot be said that one of the concepts has definitively triumphed. At the beginning of the 21st century, Paris still stands at a figurative crossroads, which could dramatically change its appearance in a very short time.

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