{"id":5796,"date":"2023-08-02T07:45:59","date_gmt":"2023-08-02T14:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5796"},"modified":"2023-08-02T07:45:59","modified_gmt":"2023-08-02T14:45:59","slug":"new-yorker-a-defense-of-the-ugliest-building-in-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=5796","title":{"rendered":"New Yorker: A Defense of the Ugliest Building in Paris"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"250\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Tour-Montparnasse.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-5797\"\/><\/center><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The sole skyscraper in central Paris celebrated its fiftieth anniversary recently, though \u201ccelebrate\u201d may not be <em>le mot juste<\/em>. When the city\u2019s official Twitter account <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Paris\/status\/1670326226869948417\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">wished<\/a> the Tour Montparnasse (\u201cMontparnasse Tower\u201d) a happy birthday, the responses were hostile even by the standards of that platform, ranging from \u201c<em>Quelle horreur<\/em>\u201d to \u201c<em>La pire chose qui soit arriv\u00e9e \u00e0 Paris depuis les Nazis<\/em>\u201d (\u201cThe worst thing to happen to Paris since the Nazis\u201d) to simply \u201c<em>Non<\/em>.\u201d Since I happened to be in town, I went to visit Paris\u2019s least beloved building for the commemoration of its first half century. Nothing was out of the ordinary for a quiet Sunday afternoon: Falun Gong members sat in cross-legged protest on the concrete plaza; rough sleepers huddled against the walls and stairways of the complex\u2019s shopping center; T-shirted tourists went straight up to, and came straight down from, the fifty-sixth floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That floor is occupied by a panoramic observation deck, which offers the most expansive view of Paris from above\u2014and, more important, the only such view that doesn\u2019t show the Tour Montparnasse itself. That oft-heard half-joke repurposes a similarly waspish remark attributed to the playwright Tristan Bernard about the Eiffel Tower, which, despite his resentment, has become a globally beloved symbol of French civilization. It\u2019s a rare Paris postcard that fails to include the older tower, and a rarer Paris postcard still that fails to exclude the newer one. (Even the hooded sweatshirts for sale in the Tour Montparnasse\u2019s own gift shop bear the image of the Eiffel Tower.) Nowhere else has such a physically conspicuous building arguably made so little obvious cultural impact; if, after fifty years, Parisians no longer ignore the Tour Montparnasse, that may be because they no longer see it in the first place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Read the whole thing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/culture\/cultural-comment\/a-defense-of-the-ugliest-building-in-paris\">at the New Yorker<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The sole skyscraper in central Paris celebrated its fiftieth anniversary recently, though \u201ccelebrate\u201d may not be le mot juste. When the city\u2019s official Twitter account wished the Tour Montparnasse (\u201cMontparnasse Tower\u201d) a happy birthday, the responses were hostile even by the standards of that platform, ranging from \u201cQuelle horreur\u201d to \u201cLa pire chose qui soit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,100],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-new-yorker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5796"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5798,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5796\/revisions\/5798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}