The project of the cultural center for the site on the Quai Branly, developed this time by Jean-Michel Willmott, was agreed on December 24, 2013 with the prefecture of Paris (without objections from the current mayor of the city, the French-speaking "Russia Today" emphasizes). It is thus already approved. Now a new version of the cultural center is shown to Parisians at an exhibition at the residence of the Russian ambassador at 79 rue Grenelle, open on this occasion for everyone. However, the exhibition will not last long: only two days, January 18-19, from 10:00 to 18:00. An agreement was also signed yesterday with the French construction company Bouygues, which will build the complex.
In addition to the temple, the dedication of which is still unknown, the complex will include a cultural center with an exhibition hall, a library and a la russe café, a parish center with offices and an auditorium, and a school for 150 students, which the Russian community insisted on. According to Russian Ambassador to France Alexander Orlov, Parisian parishes are overcrowded with believers, and a new spacious church is required; The ambassador also compared the beginning construction with the construction of the Alexander III bridge and called both structures symbols of Russian-French friendship, ITAR-TASS reports. In addition, Alexander Orlov told the press that the project received the blessing of Patriarch Kirill, who personally gave recommendations to architects.
The previously announced construction site will not change: the 4.6 hectare site is located on Quai Branly, close to the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides and very close to the Museum of Non-European Art, built in 2001-2006 by Jean Nouvel. Now the territory of the future Russian center is occupied by the Meteo France building planned for demolition in 1948 (the building density will decrease compared to the current situation, writes Le Moniteur; according to Wilmott, the Russian authorities did not insist on obtaining the maximum square meters). The new building is planned to be faced with Burgundy stone, from which, the authors remind, the Louvre and Notre Dame were built, and which is often found on the facades of neighboring buildings in the prestigious 7th quarter of Paris. Thin strips of stone form a loose mesh, trying to dissolve the hulls in the air, make them more invisible and delicate. The height of the main cross is 35.85 m, the hull is no higher than 18 m, which fits into the framework of altitude restrictions; the domes are matte so as not to shine too much. It is promised to start construction in June of this year, and to finish it in 2017.
Recall that a high-profile competition for the building of the Parisian cultural center was held in 2010-2011; it was won by the Spanish postmodernist Manuel Nunez-Yanovsky, who settled in France (the Sade Paris bureau together with the Moscow Arch Group), but the winning project caused a violent and rather negative reaction both in Russia and in France, and was in early 2012, in the process of agreement with the prefecture, rejected on the initiative of the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe. Yesterday's article in the French-language Rossiya Segodnya hints that Delanoe could have taken such a tough stance because of the failure of Frederic Borel's project, lobbied by the mayor's office during the vote and coming in third; however, the author of the article also complains about the pressure of the "anti-Russian and anti-Putin" circle of the mayor.
After the scandal, Russia withdrew the request for approval of the Nunez-Yanovsky project, and in February 2013 it became known that Jean-Michel Wilmotte, an architect whose project won 2nd place in the competition, where his bureau worked together with “Mosproekt-2 . Nunez-Janowski, in turn, in June 2013 filed a lawsuit against Bertrand Delanoe, demanding from him 10 million euros in compensation; he demanded to freeze the contract and forbid his colleague Jean-Michel Wilmotte to work on this project.
As you can see, the contract was not frozen. Wilmott's architects have completely rethought their project and now emphasize that the new version has nothing to do with the 2011 competition project.
For comparison
Below we publish Michel Wilmott's 2011 project, which took 2nd place in the competition, and Frederic Borel's project (3rd place). Images from the website of the Office of the President of the Russian Federation.
