In The Open Air

摘要

Just over century ago, if you had been standing on the Pont d'Austerlitz bridge in Paris looking up river to the east, your eye might have been drawn to a new warehouse being constructed on the Left Bank. You might have marvelled at the sheer scale of the thing, with its curious reinforced concrete structure that seemed to go on for ever, beating a steady rhythm 280m along the river frontage. Completed in 1907, the Docks de Paris, as the building came to be known, was a gigantic repository for bulk goods shipped up and down the River Seine by barge. Heroically looking to the future, this functional monolith symbolised the industrial progress and efficiency of a new century. It was the first building in Paris to employ a reinforced concrete structure and according to Brendan MacFarlane, one of the architects of the recent remodelling, Le Corbusier was said to be fascinated by it.