Hector Guimard, Entrance to the Métropolitain, c. 1898
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Guimard, who styled himself the architect d'art, did not exhibit at the Paris 1900 exposition, but his work was highly visible nonetheless. He had won the competition to design entrances for the city's new subway system, the Métropolitian. With the large number of visitors expected to attend the fair, city planners realized that transportation would have to be improved, and permission was given for six underground lines. (London's Underground, the oldest subway system, went into service in 1863.)
The influential president of the society of architects was Charles Garnier, who had designed Paris' ornate, baroque-style Opéra. He felt the new subway entrances should have the same grandeur -- expensive materials and a design that disguised the structures' true function. At least in part, the grand designs he preferred failed because many Parisian streets were simply too narrow to accommodate them.
Instead, the city built Guimard's light and graceful structures. They became so closely identified with the subway that in France art nouveau was sometimes called le style métro. (Guimard, who was not shy about self-promotion, did not wince when it was also called le style Guimard.) The entrances used modern materials -- iron and glass -- whose functions were transparent. The design was modular; five different types of station could be constructed using the same components. They ranged from simple open stairways illuminated by electric lights, to covered stairs whose glass canopies were likened to dragonfly wings and complete pavilion enclosures.
Parisians and foreign visitors to the exposition were struck by the stations' modernity. Clearly, the iron and glass and engineering were modern. So, too, was Guimard's decision to use natural forms as a basis for decoration rather than the repertory of baroque and classical architectural motifs that had usually been applied to public architecture. Tall iron stalks arched over the stairs and supported bulbous lights shaped like flower heads.
Learning Activities
Art
• Create a design proposal for the new escalator canopies being planned
(in 2000) for the subway in Washington, D.C. (or for bus stops, rail stations,
etc. in your town).
• Compare the design of various new airport terminals. How do their designs reflect a twentieth-century modernity?
Social Science
• Discuss the criteria used to decide a design competition for a major
twentieth-century monument or public works project like the Washington subway.
| Viollet-le-Duc and modern iron Guimard, like Horta and Sullivan, cited the theories and designs of French architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814-1879) as an important influence. Viollet-le-Duc, who restored Paris' Notre Dame cathedral, was a proponent of the gothic revival style, yet he decried what he called the "grotesque medley" of eclectic historicism. He felt a style appropriate to the nineteenth century could be found with modern iron and glass used in honest constructions that did not try to disguise the materials' or the buildings' functions. The Paris métro provided a clear answer to Viollet-le-Duc's question, "Is the nineteenth century destined to close without possessing an architecture of its own?" |