Title : Dictionary of Love of Bordeaux - Alain Juppé - book
Summary :
Bordeaux seen by the architect of its revival. "I wasn't born in Bordeaux. My hometown is Mont-de-Marsan, the capital of the Landes department, about 120 km south of Bordeaux. I lived there throughout my childhood and adolescence. And what about Bordeaux? My paternal grandparents lived in Bordeaux. My parents, my sister, and I visited them from time to time. I have few memories of it. Every time school started, my mother would drag my sister and me to Mod, the "chic" boutique on Place de la Comédie where she dressed us for winter. She didn't really like Bordeaux. Isabelle and I moved to Bordeaux in 1994. We found our dream house in an old building on Impasse des Tanneries. We were happy there. I foolishly sold the house in 2004, on a whim. I was in shock over my conviction and needed a break. Here we are today in the heart of the city, between two strategic sites: the Mollat bookstore and the Palais Rohan. What a joy to walk to my office at the City Hall every morning. I think back to the city as it was more than two decades ago. It was certainly already beautiful, but it had fallen asleep. "The sleeping beauty," they said. Tourists passing through it on their way to the luminous south found it dark and didn't stop. It was indeed dark. It brought a kind of coquettishness to it. When I launched my first renovation campaign, I remember that a Bordeaux writer lamented in the press that the city was being erased by soot... and its very particular poetry. The people of Bordeaux quickly realized that renovation also meant restoring buildings that often needed it; that it was above all revealing the details of an architecture hidden beneath the grime. The contagion quickly spread and the people of Bordeaux rediscovered their city. When I presented my first urban project, I had two guiding ideas: first, to provide the city with modern and powerful public transport to prevent the emerging congestion of travel; and to reconquer or conquer both banks of the Garonne to resolutely open Bordeaux to its river. The left bank had been deserted by the port, which had left only ruined hangars. As for the right bank, it was still, for the "classic" Bordeaux residents, a virtually unknown space, another world that was not frequented. "Obscure taboo? Unwritten law?" asks JM Planes in his pamphlet on the Quinconces. Times have changed. The tramway has become a sort of umbilical cord between the left bank and the right bank, which is no longer "the shriveled kidney" in the meander of the river that JM Planes spoke of in another text. The stone bridge, now reserved for public transport and soft travel, accommodates up to 10,000 cyclists per day and a swarm of pedestrians. The development of the quays is popular. It has transformed a no man's land into a living space frequented daily by both the inhabitants of the city and the metropolis as well as by tourists. What a joy for me to meet happy citizens there, proud of their city!
EAN : 9782259212298
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