paris, promenade plantée
*This map, scanned from National Geographic of October 2006, plots Paris' extensive park system. I have highlighted my objects of inquiry, Place des Vosges and the Promenade Plantée, in red.
Designed by Jacques Vergely (landscape architect) and Philippe Mathieux (architect), the promenade is a 2.8 mile elevated park in Paris’ 12th arrondissement that extends from Opera Bastille to the eastern city limits. It reinhabits a 19th century railway viaduct abandoned since 1969 and has inspired several United States parks-in-progress including the High Line in New York, the Bloomingdale Trail in Chicago, and the Reading Viaduct in Philadelphia.
I took the three images above from the promenade’s primary section, called Viaduc des Arts. Here the park perches above broad supporting arches filled with arts and crafts workshops, visible in the image at right. The image at center captures the typical condition above: a wide, paved path with periodic resting points engulfed in an overwhelming explosion of greenery whose novel vantage surrenders cinematically screened city views. Panoramas appear when a wider street must be spanned and the viaduct section correspondingly thinned, as on the image to the left. Note that, in the right and left images, the smaller promenade plants naturally conform to the street trees’ height, reinforcing the raised relationship to and urban unity with the
