The Hindu : International : New look for Les Halles

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Dec 14, 2004

International

International

New look for Les Halles

PARIS, DEC. 13. The new face of Les Halles, arguably the ugliest scar to disfigure the world's most beautiful city, will be unveiled this week when the Mayor of Paris announces which of the four competing projects he has chosen, to revamp the sprawling concrete and glass monstrosity.

Postponed for more than six months, the decision is one of the most sensitive that Bertrand Delanoe will face in his five-year mandate.

Paris's equivalent of Covent Garden, Les Halles was the city's bustling central food market until the 1960s, when despite a long-running and occasionally violent protest campaign by local residents, the old halls were unceremoniously torn down and the whole area became a building site for a decade.

The site, used by more than 41 million people a year, now houses a 1970's mall with 180 shops on four different levels; a suburban railway and metro interchange that handles 800,000 passengers a day; a swimming pool; a library; a music school; and the largest cinema multiplex in Europe.

But in a city that prides itself on achieving a pleasing blend of inspired architectural innovation and well-preserved classicism, the decaying and graffiti-tagged walls of Les Halles, its leaking roofs and its largely unusable gardens — a well-known hangout for drug dealers — are now an embarrassment.

Of the four projects, two are rumoured to have caught the eyes of the Mayor and of the council's six-member tenders committee, which is nominally responsible for choosing the winner.

The favourite, by the French architect David Mangin, is backed by most local residents, who appreciate its greenery, the play areas for children and the capacity to house neighbourhood food stores, and by some influential Greens on the city council, who say it is "by some way the least bad" proposal.

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