This decision of the jury, chaired by the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, put an end to a long history of attempts to improve the difficult urban situation in the former “Womb of Paris”. The first food market appeared near the present Center Pompidou and Rue de Rivoli (1st Parisian arrondissement) as early as the 12th century, and in the 19th century the scattered buildings were replaced by glass and metal pavilions. It was this wholesale market that Emile Zola called "The Belly of Paris". Due to the general "unhygienic" and disorganized ensemble in the 1960s. it was demolished, and for almost ten years the site in the city center was empty. But in 1981, the then Mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac, inaugurated the new Le Halles (Covered Market) complex. But there was no room left for wholesalers: Forum Le All was turned into an underground shopping center, combined with a metro station (4 lines) and a high-speed railway (3 lines). The city dwellers did not like the glass "umbrellas" and the cramped halls of the new building, the park laid out around it also did not gain popularity. In recent years, the situation has worsened: next to the large number of cheap cafes that appeared there, it was easy to buy drugs. Many Parisians have tried to stay away from the area, despite its location in the heart of the city. At the same time, Forum, which did not cope well with the influx of passengers and customers (300 million people a year), had already begun to deteriorate and required repairs.
Therefore, in 2002, Delanoe announced his intention to turn it into a modern center of urban life: to reconstruct or replace old buildings, to strengthen the significance of Le Halle Park (its area according to the new project was supposed to be at least 4 hectares) and to transform the open spaces of the area, to facilitate access citizens to the interchange center of public transport and to the public and commercial buildings of the quarter, to reduce the traffic flow, and in general - to create clear connections between all the elements that are now part of the "system" of Le Hal.
Rem Koolhaas, Jean Nouvel and MVRDV entered the final of the then announced architecture competition, but the winner in December 2004 was the much less famous French architect David Mangin, who developed his very discreet project with the workshop SEURA. But its version, which met with opposition from the public, was decided only to be taken as a basis, and to select a specific "guide to action" to hold another architectural competition.
104 workshops from all over the world took part in it, and Massimiliano Fuksas, Toyo Ito and Paul Shemetov were among the finalists. As a result, the Berger and Anzutti option was chosen. According to their project, a huge canopy - a "square" - over the "Forum", conceived by Mangin, turned into a kind of crowns of a cluster of trees made of glass and steel. It is elevated 11 m above the ground and overlaps with a 65 mx 45 m atrium that connects all the underground and above ground levels of the complex. The project covers an area that goes underground to a depth of 20 m, to the floor of the metro station, while the retail space located below ground level will hardly be affected by the changes. As for the above-ground buildings, they will be replaced by a new museum, concert hall, cafes and shops.
The structure of the canopy that completes the complex of the new "Forum" deserves special mention. It is a whimsically curved steel frame covered with panels of frosted glass, iridescent in all the colors of the rainbow. It builds on the existing base of the old structure, and solar panels will be added to its glazing to help partially meet Le Hal's electricity needs. Another green element of the project will be a rainwater collection system at the building's pillars, which will be used to irrigate the surrounding park. The yellow-green color of the glass chosen by the architects should be in harmony with the tree crowns of the mentioned park.
