FRENCH BAGATELLES IN ARCHITECTURE

A photo and a drawing – French bagatelles 

I will now focus on places in the memory that gives us the reason to create sites. Not obviously sites with built houses in material with its form and history and as an architect try to coop with that when you do your own proposal in architecture I think the site is more influenced by our own experience in life and how for ex how our senses has reflective them.

It’s a site in the memory I lived on 6ème étage in Paris seventh arrondissement. Together with other foreigners in Paris near Place Blanche A big family from a French colony were a child was born in when I lived there and the proud father sat in the telephone all the time I think that was his only space he had in this little room Lucie who had been a prostituted under to world war could speak many languages, She have a picture of a soldier on her wall. I ask who he was and she said it was her husband The French houslord was married to a 40 year younger American baletdancer that had travel all over the world with her dancecompany She had the so called Cat room up o 6ème étage a room with a bed and a table and lots lots of pictures on cats. And lots of other lovely people. I still have a suitcase there in the cellar. My room was the only room that had to Cockroaches It was here I started my transformation 

Only 100 meter from this house on Rue the Bruxelles it was a little park I passed it every day It was almost no one sitting there Maybe there was a sofa The vegetation was surrounded with an fence It had a shadow over it The wind stood still there I always had a quick look at it

Last week when I was reading Walter Benjamin Walter Benjamin planned many journeys with his friends but he always cancelled them just before he was go

 I saw a dusty pictures of a park and a road and suddenly I recognise that it was the same park at my road in Paris Walter Benjamin had seen it. I was amazed the Park at its site cant be dead or sleeping it must be something with it

Absolutely in the history our senses had about the same experience but in different times 

Somehow he also lived far away from the bookstores in Marais.

I think that the artist is absolutelt unsecure maybe scepticIt’s a big problem for him to be a part of a social life He can ve ignorant paranoid to sensitive etc 

But the picture in the book made me believe in my senses he couldn’t cheat on me with this observation of a park I believed in what I saw We had probably over some time the same picture in our memory

I couldn’t hesitate the pictures about gallerias in Paris in the same book This well known architecture that made a great impact on me

When I come home from Paris I was sitting in an architectural office in Old Town in Stockholm The head of the office bent over me at my table and said very fast -Can you do some sketches for a galleria in Stockholm Its going to look a little as Old Town. - I return to you tomorrow.

I did these sketches very fast:

Paris cafés restaurants shops was strong in my memory It was a lively and a live culture Old town seems to me a bit picturesque I wondered would a modern galleria look like some old places Maybe not. The office was famous because they produces what was called pastiches.

The day after the head of the office, the businessman, came to me He showed me that he was disappointed and told me that he was going to do his sketches himself. Now its built and I leave you to your pictures inside about the place, Sturegallerian.

Later I have to have out with my chef by recommend him some books that was my point of view I never know if he understood

I will 29 years later put it on a another site my website and the virtual world seems banal compared to humans inner life and its sites

I stay with this, leave any analyses to the reader and for a discussion I like the reader to do that himself this time with the pictures and storys behind and leave you alone with my 2 bagatelles.

Agneta Eriksson Hildén