European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - November 03, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse F r an c e the City off Light is getting brighter by John Rockwell the new York times Paris Calls itself the City of Light in the daytime despite Subtle shifts caused by pollution and worldwide weather patterns the diffuse Northern sunlight has remained fairly constant Over the centuries. Or so paintings photographs and novelistic descriptions suggest. But nighttime is different and the notion of a City of Light a slogan adopted with the widespread electrification of Paris in the late 19th Century has meant different things in different decades. Now reflecting rapid technological evolution in the last 15 years and the rapidity with which the centralized French bureaucracy can respond to such changes the nighttime illumination of Paris has become More pervasive striking and subtly Beautiful than Ever. Paris lighting is everywhere bathing entire ancient neighbourhoods in a soft enveloping glow. And typically of the French the Art of Public lighting has grown into a full fledged artistically self conscious profession with Public support the Active involvement of politicians and now an influence that is spreading throughout Europe. The most dazzling recent addition to the illuminated Paris Skyline came last fall when the Cour Napoleon of the louvre was lighted for the official opening of the Richelieu Wing. That elaborate and costly display with thousands of tiny lights pinpointing every architectural detail of the Palace s vast Central courtyard turned out to be an All the More flamboyant expenditure of Public funds by being merely temporary. It has been dismantled now with the grand louvre awaiting a comprehensive lighting scheme when the refurbishment of the entire museum is completed in 1997. The latest Paris lighting project will be equally v " ambitious. Jacques Chirac the mayor of Paris had Long sought to illuminate the historic Bridges Over the Seine. On july 4, the Pont notre dam and the pontau 7 change which Are the first two Bridges to the East of the Pont neuf on the Northern Side of the lie de la Cit were introduced in their new electrified dress. By the end of j 1995,11 More Bridges in the heart of the City will be similarly illuminated. The Bridge project reveals the roles played by the i various personalities and agencies in the lighting of Paris. The initiative came from Chirac and the Street directorate of the mayor s office which is responsible for the illumination of monuments and for Basic Street lighting. The National ministry of culture Only gets involved when a building is a state run National Monument like the louvre /. ". / until recently nearly All French Public lighting was handled both conceptually and technically by the state electricity monopoly iectricit6 de France. The company has a special division the service Dairace Public devoted solely to Public lighting. \ in 1987, f-iectricit6 de France established a fondation electricity de France which aids in the dissemination of ideas about lighting. The company also has its own Paris Art gallery the space Electra on the left Bank. Among recent exhibitions there were Paris Ville Lumiere which offered projects by International artists including the americans Bill Fontana and Max Neuhaus and a one Man show devoted to Yann Versale whose lighting projects and building illuminations have been installed Alt Over the world. Electricit6 de France s lighting division remains the principal resource for the technical realization of lighting designs but the designs themselves Are now often Farmed out to the growing Field of Independent lighting designers and to lighting artists like Versale. For the first two Bridges in the Seine Bridge project the mayor s office organized a Competition in which four finalists emerged each of whose projects were estimated . Timer the pontau change on the Northern Side of Fie de la cite has been dressed in a technological Marvel of lights. To Cost about the same. The service Ddai rage devised computer realizations of what the projects would look like which consisted of computer screen images resembling brilliantly realistic color photographs. _ Chirac then requested their display on four adjacent monitors said Dominique Kaczmarek of the service Clairage strode into the room Casta glance and made his personal decision very this imperious process contrasts sharply for better and for worse with the More cumbersome american tradition of Public hearings and political clashes in the commissioning of Public Art. A. -. ".". The design Chirac chose the softest and subtlest of the four epitomizes French aesthetics and technology in this Field. Conceived by a father son team called Etudes it creations d ambiance it uses a myriad of Small highly efficient lights mounted directly on the Bridges to cast a searching but sensuously indirect glow onto the. Structures. The most obvious contrast to this scheme was a proposal to place Strong spotlights on the Banks of the Seine casting Black dramatic shadows under the Bridges Arches. A the 1950s, the idea was to show a Monument As if it were Day said Pierre Bideau a creator of what he likes to Call Mises in Lumiere who is based in Tours France. It was Bideau who eight years ago designed the Golden new lighting for the Eiffel Tower which remains the most striking single piece of Public lighting in All of Paris _. / now Bideau continued we try to translate the night to evoke different sentiments than the Day to reveal different details. We seek to create an _ atmosphere an All this has been made possible by the commercial development since the late 1970s of Small High efficiency Halogen lights which permit a Range of color without the use of filters and which brought the Cost of electricity for such projects to Public officials made nervous by the Energy crisis of the 70s, to within reasonable limits electricity de France has been particularly Active in exploring such technology although it was Philips the dutch electronics concern that handled the Eiffel Tower. In the workshops of the service Clairage Public alongside the computer realization room is a Host of newly designed rigs and housings that can project and reflect strings of Small lights and be installed directly onto the ledges and cornices of ornately decorated Renaissance baroque Rococo and 19th-Century structures. To t. these buildings were conceived at a time when electricity did not exist Kaczmarek said. You can t illuminate buildings from above like the Sun you Blind the people below. But illuminating from the Bottom up reverses natural Light. You need Small reflectors to avoid dark pits and shadowy blackness and to diffuse the Light in a harmonious there is not yet an official course of training for French Public lighting designers Bideau said. Some come from the theater some from film some from what he called show experience in All those Fields is helpful he added but the Best Basic education is still an All purpose school of Fine arts. Not All Public lighting designers Are French but most of them Are and it is the French whose ideas and techniques Are spreading throughout Europe. �lectricit6 de France last year combined with the state electricity company of Italy to illuminate several major italian monuments. And the French recently completed another project to Light the Castle that broods Over Prague czech Republic. It is in France however that French ideas have been most extensively and elaborately realized. And those ideas most definitely reflect a French sensibility. Despite the color possibilities opened up by Halogen lights the color Range in Paris remains primarily White through a warm yellow to Gold. That harmonious sameness reflects the unanimity or perhaps the uniformity of the Paris cityscape. It is comparable to the 19th-Century architecture that defines the newer parts of the City and whose facades Are religiously preserved no matter How High tech the interiors behind them. Every project from state to municipal to private has to conform to the rules of the City of Paris Kaczmarek said. But above All there is a stripes Magazine november 3, 1994
