50 millions ! - La Tribune de l'Art

: 1. Square de l’Archevêché in March 2010
Photo : Emmanuel Delarue; See the image in its page

One point of the cathedral’s surrounds redevelopment project has not been sufficiently emphasised in recent days. Its implausible cost. Let’s remember that the day after the Notre-Dame fire, Anne Hidalgo proudly announced that Paris would donate 50 million euros for the restoration of the building. The idea was bad and we recalled it: when you are in charge of a hundred or so religious buildings and you are not able to take care of them properly, if you have this money, you spend it on maintaining and restoring them, you don’t come to top up a site that doesn’t need it. This is all the more true since the promise of the Mayor of Paris was made when it was already known that all the necessary money had already been found.

In any case, Anne Hidalgo had made this promise. It was a lie, as the mayor is wont to do. There was no question of it afterwards, until she suddenly decided that the 50 million would be allocated to the development of the surroundings. What was the connection between the necessary restoration of the cathedral and the development of its surroundings? None, of course. If only because these areas had not been affected by the fire. It is true that the parvis had to be treated because of lead pollution, but this had nothing to do with any kind of development, and it was the responsibility of the State. Admittedly, the construction site, which requires the use of part of the surroundings (a right of way that, it should be remembered, Anne Hidalgo tried to make the public establishment in charge of the restoration pay for - see article), has greatly degraded them, particularly the Jardin de l’Archevêché (also caled square Jean XXIII) to the east and south of the monument.

: 2. Square de l’Archevêché in March 2010
Photo : Emmanuel Delarue; See the image in its page

But these degradations are therefore the responsibility of the public establishment, which will then have to restore it, as is the rule during a construction or restoration site. The restoration du square Jean XXIII would cost the City nothing if it listened for once to the voice of common sense and the demands of Parisians (and not only of them): an identical restoration of this square. As for the price of such an operation, which would consist of putting back the displaced furniture, redoing the lawn, restoring the soil, and planting the shrubs and flowers that have disappeared, how much can we put a figure on it, being very broad? One million euros? That already seems like a lot. In the document intended for the CNPA, it is said that one of the ambitions of the project is to "limit waterproofing". But how were these gardens "waterproof" (ill. 1 and 2 [1])?

The town hall wants to plant trees. Very well. 158 additional trees, she writes in the document intended for the CNPA. Knowing that she claims to plant 170 000 trees (we’re not laughing) by 2026, this represents exactly 0.093% of the total. Either the mayor’s office is talking nonsense about the number of trees it’s planting, or we believe it, and it won’t cost it anything because it will be a drop in the bucket of the huge forest it’s going to enrich Paris with.

Where does all this money go? Because even though we know that the municipality is not thrifty with the taxes of Parisians, 50 million euros is not nothing. The only major work (apart from planting trees and damaging the gardens around Notre-Dame) concerns the square. And under the crypt, the development of a "vestibule". This is the term used by the town hall in the document intended for the CNPA. It is a "vestibule" that will replace the underground car park built in the 1970s.

So this car park will be transformed into a vestibule. But what is a "vestibule" for the Paris City Council? In this document we find several definitions and/or characteristics

– the vestibule is: "a typology of transition and articulation that is in keeping with the sense of history: that of the base, the cathedral, the island and Paris".
– the vestibule is: "in architecture, the room through which one enters a building or a house and which is often used as a passage to reach the other rooms",
– the vestibule is "an inside and an outside",
– the vestibule is "a beginning",
– the vestibule is "a space of articulation" (a little further on we read that it is "a typology of transition and articulation"),
– the vestibule "offers perspectives and views",
– the vestibule is "a comfortable place",
– the vestibule is "a happy space",
– the vestibule is "a timeless space".
– the vestibule is "an interior landscape, which one walks through entirely, a walk through time and space",
– the vestibule is "a temperate shelter within the Ile de la Cité",
– the vestibule is "a natural refuge in rainy or hot weather",
– the vestibule is "a continuous landscape, never isolated from the city",
– the vestibule is "complementary to the landscape above",
– the vestibule is "a typology of transition and articulation",

And all this for only 50 million euros? That’s a bargain! So much so that soon, probably, the question will be asked as to who could have had the bizarre idea of building a cathedral next to this vestibule...

: 3. One of the "group rooms" in the "vestibule".
© Bureau Bas Smets; See the image in its page

More prosaically, this vestibule, as it appears from the plans and descriptions, is :

– two staircases and two lifts leading to and from it,
– "group rooms" (ill. 3),
– "offices" (ill. 4),
– "reception banks",
– sanitary facilities",
– a "shop",
– a "café" and a "new access to the Seine",
– "lockers",
– a "new entrance to the archaeological crypt", near a "piece of the times" [2]".

One wonders, then, about the final destination of this "vestibule". What and for whom will the "group rooms" and "offices" be used? A clue is given on p. 42: "These rooms, as in the Middle Ages, are all designed to be flexible and evolving over time: a group room today, a banqueting space tomorrow, a workshop the day after tomorrow". A flexibility, one suspects, that could very quickly lead to the expansion of the shops and the café. The latter overlooks the Seine (ill. 5), just where the quay is pierced by twelve openings (the "new access") which we now know what they will be used for.
Who will be welcomed at the reception desks? No one knows. Not the cathedral’s visitors, in any case, who are queuing elsewhere, above ground, to enter the building.

: 5. "Piece of the times (see note 3) / Café Seine’ in the ’vestibule’.
© Bureau Bas Smets; See the image in its page

This vestibule, under the parvis, next to but separate from the archaeological crypt, and also separate from the cathedral, has no other role than to attract the public to have a coffee with an unobstructed view of the Seine and to do some shopping. All this for 50 million, in a city that is over-indebted and has just increased local taxes by 52% in one year.