This April, 21 students from BA2 and BA1 travelled to Paris to experience the city and its architecture.
Alongside our other European trips to Rotterdam, Rome and Seville, the Paris trip was made possible using funding designed to facilitate more international experiences for our undergraduate Architecture students. Aiming to be as sustainable as possible, we travelled from Liverpool to London by train, before continuing via Eurostar to Paris.
Our hostel, whilst having a particularly lively bar during the evenings, was useful in terms of being located just seconds away from Gare du Nord station, into which the Eurostar arrives. This also served well when getting the Metro around Paris (although purchasing Metro tickets on the first day proved a particular challenge!)
Our visits focussed on two houses by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, the Villa Savoye (1929) and Villa La Roche (1925), given current BA2 design projects. We also visited several structurally innovative designs including works by RFR (Peter Rice), which is being taught in the ARCH261 Structural Design module. These included the Grande Arche de la Défense (Johann Otto von Spreckelsen and Paul Andreu, 1989), Parc de la Villette (Bernard Tschumi, 1998) and the Centre Pompidou (Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers, 1977). We also had a guided tour of the Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, which exhibits architectural drawings and models from the medieval period to the present day. A highlight here was a 1:1 scale model of an apartment from Le Corbusier’s Unite d’ Habitation apartment building.
Besides Le Corbusier, Jean Nouvel was a constant name throughout the trip, and we stopped at several of his buildings including the Philharmonie de Paris (2015), Musée du quai Branly (2005) and the Institut du Monde Arabe (1987). Many more works of architecture were also seen as part of walking tours along the way, such as the Bibliothèque Nationale by Dominique Perrault (1995).
Special thanks Stephen Graham, who co-led the trip with Nick Webb, and thanks to the students for their engagement throughout. We thoroughly enjoyed showing everyone around.
Gallery
Click to enlarge
