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It is a colossus of glass, metallic, and stone with a location that makes all the opposite Paris monuments envious. Positioned between the Seine and the Champs-Élysées, the Grand Palais was constructed for the 1900 Exposition Universelle world truthful to showcase French artwork. Closed three years in the past for its first full renovation in historical past, it is getting a second lease of life for the Paris Olympics and Paralympics. FRANCE 24 takes you behind the scenes.
Since its opening in 1900, selection has outlined Paris‘s Grand Palais. From car gala’s to agricultural occasions and horse competitions, its nave has seen dozens of occasions hosted beneath its majestic glass roof. And whereas it has held quite a few business occasions, artwork has all the time been centre stage.
Throughout its 124-year historical past, wars have pressed pause on this vitality. Throughout World War I, the Grand Palais was remodeled right into a army hospital. Throughout World War II, it hosted two exhibitions in service to Nazi propaganda. However within the late Nineteen Forties, the nave returned to internet hosting exhibitions, with the primary Renault 4L offered there, adopted by the stress cooker within the Nineteen Fifties. After a couple of years of neglect, the nave was again in motion for the FIAC (Worldwide Up to date Artwork Truthful) of 1977. Quite a lot of occasions adopted: carnivals, ice rinks, digital music live shows and trend exhibits. In 2017, Tour de France cyclists even crossed beneath its glass roof. For the Monumenta modern artwork exhibition, the nave was taken over by world-famous French and international artists: Christian Boltanski, Anish Kapoor and Daniel Buren, to call however a couple of. As a part of the Artwork Paris contemporary art truthful, Chinese language photographer Li Wei flew beneath the glass roof, remaining weightless for 10 minutes for an iconic picture shoot.
Make means for the Olympics
In the summertime of 2024, the nave of the Grand Palais will host Olympic fencing and taekwondo occasions, a primary for this architectural gem. “Athletes and the general public will soak up a constructing that’s one-of-a-kind on the earth,” Didier Fusillier, president of the Grand Palais, informed us enthusiastically. “It’s a must to think about that, within the Grand Palais, you can match your complete Palace of Versailles. This immensity will create the expertise of a rare Olympic occasion,” he continued. However so as to organise the Olympics there and proceed to make use of the Grand Palais, restoration work was important. This huge challenge started in March 2021 and is predicted to be accomplished in spring 2025.
A renovation challenge going through each day challenges
4 years of labor, a finances of practically €500 million and as much as 1,000 staff on website daily are wanted to renovate the constructing in file time, because the challenge’s director Daniel Sancho defined to us. “We face technical challenges daily relying on the discoveries we make: lead, asbestos, and this slows down the development,” Sancho defined. One other problem is the nave, with its 13,500 sq. metres of glass roof. When requested about insulation, Sancho smiled: “There is no such thing as a insulation. We’re in a greenhouse. With the intention to enhance the consolation of the general public, now we have subsequently determined to make the house comfy at floor degree. We’ve built-in a fluid-based heating system into the flooring: we flow into both chilly water or scorching water to realize an affordable degree of consolation with out having to warmth the 450,000 cubic metres of the nave, which might be a waste of vitality.”
Photographing the development website to immortalise it
French photographer and visible artist Marguerite Bornhauser was chosen by the Grand Palais in 2021 to seize the renovation challenge. The 35-year-old was given carte blanche to immortalise the work, which she calls an “infinite” supply of inspiration.
“All the pieces evokes me,” she informed us as she took us to the roof of the Grand Palais, which is normally inaccessible. “There are the features everybody is aware of in regards to the Grand Palais, such because the fantastic nave and the immense dimension. And on the identical time, I’ve an eye fixed for element, so I just like the perks from the development website – every part that falls to the bottom, a glint of sunshine – it is infinite!”
Bornhauser images these particulars together with her digital and movie cameras on the roof of the Grand Palais, within the nave, but additionally within the basement of the constructing, which she notably loves. “The brightness from the development website’s neon lights is sort of astonishing. It is spectacular, very theatrical. And I additionally discover that it represents the employees’ labour effectively. The boys grow to be a bit like shadows, there’s loads of chiaroscuro. It is dramatic truly with these lights falling like that, with these neon lights; the ceilings are decrease, there are fewer colors, it’s extremely, very completely different.”
Within the coming months, Bornhauser will proceed to {photograph} the development website. As a result of whereas the work on the nave will probably be full for the Olympics, it should proceed in the remainder of the Grand Palais till June 2025.
