Consider this a sequel to my post on Galerie Vivienne.
These are three arcades: Passage des Panoramas, Passage Jouffroy and Passage Verdeau. They're in the 2nd and 9th districts along the shopping district on the Grands Boulevards. Interestingly, these arcades are all aligned so that you cross a street or boulevard to get from one to the other, so they form a little network distinct from yet connecting the open-air streets. As with Galerie Vivienne, I stumbled upon them unexpectedly, which is entirely the best way to encounter these little worlds.
Every arcade I've been to so far has awesome book shops. This store had an amazing selection of art books, and I couldn't resist buying one for myself---the complete prints of Piranesi for only €30!
(And as a bonus on finding the good bargain, I even made eye contact with a cutie inside the bookstore. These arcades truly are full of good things...)
The arcades' kaleidescopic environments. Immersion in such a variety of transparencies and reflections must have been a novel experience for many in the early-mid 19th Century.
I've seen similar forms in Stockholm, Barcelona, Prague, and Amsterdam. It's somewhat like a mall, but there are clearly many owners (rather than the one large owner-many small tenant structure typical of North American malls). Indeed, I imagine the legalities of these places must be positively Byzantine. John Habraken calls this wide distribution of ownership rights (which most interestingly include the right to modify) a "fine-grained" tenancy. As long as owners are constrained to keep changes somewhat within reason, you eventually end up with these lovely spaces you've shared with us.
ReplyDeleteLove the way you capture the great architecture!
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