An ambitious cultural hub has long been planned for a former Renault auto factory on Ile Séguin, an island in the Seine east of Paris. One of the highlights is the R4 project, which will include art production facilities, auction rooms, and exhibition space when completed in 2016. Although the island has been empty since the car factory was shuttered in 1992, some residents in the town of Boulogne-Billancourt are still not thrilled with the proposed mammoth development. Now the town’s mayor, Pierre-Christophe Baguet, has announced a referendum on three proposed designs for the project — all of which are by Jean Nouvel.
Le Journal des Arts reports that the first design features four towers ranging between 330 and 400 feet tall and also has the most green space (140,000 square feet) with cultural spaces dominating commercial areas. The second design has a single 360-foot-tall observation tower, almost the same amount of green space, but more room for commercial ventures than for cultural ones. The third design has low-lying buildings, but far less green space.
Nouvel’s original design called for five 500-foot towers, which many locals saw as out-of-keeping with the scale of buildings in the area. Last February, Baguet, who was elected mayor in 2008 on a platform of resisting over-development, asked Nouvel to replace the five towers with two. Now, however, the architect may hang on to four of his towers, since the deck seems stacked in favor of that proposal. Residents who want to get the most green space and cultural space out of the deal will have to vote for the four tall towers.
The blog Sauvons l’Ile Séguin called the referendum a “crude trap,” pointing out that voters cannot simply vote “no” to all three designs and that the results are not legally binding anyway. Rejecting the three choices as “a lot of concrete, enormous amounts of concrete, or an avalanche of concrete,” the blog advocates a development with a smaller footprint and no towers.
Residents can vote by mail or via the project’s website between November 24 and December 10, or they can go to one of sixteen polls specially set up for the occasion on December 16.
— Kate Deimling
(Image via Ile Séguin/Facebook.)
