Vue générale (General view)
Forum des Halles
Quartier des Halles, 1st arrondissement
Paris, July 2002
“The Forum des Halles, a partially underground multiple story commercial and shopping centre, designed by Claude Vasconi and Georges Pencreac'h, opened at the east end of the site on 4 September 1979 in the presence of the Mayor of Paris Jacques Chirac. A public garden covering 4 hectares (9.9 acres) opened in 1986. Many of the surrounding streets were pedestrianized. The demolition of Baltard's market hall structure and the design of the spaces that replaced it proved highly controversial over the subsequent decades. The critic Oliver Wainwright called the razing ‘one of the worst acts of urban vandalism of the century’, and that the place became a ‘national embarrassment’ with the park ‘a magnet for drug dealing’. Historian Donato Severo called the events ‘the most violent act ever committed against the heritage of Paris’, with architect Lloyd Alter adding that the replacement complex was ‘nearly universally reviled for its mean spirit’.” (Les Halles, Wikipedia)
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