Concrete and the engineered picturesque: The Parc des Buttes Chaumont (Paris, 1867)

Journal of Architectural Education

Volumn 58, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 5-12

  Komara, Ann ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

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EID: 66549128967     PISSN: 10464883     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/1046488041578158     Document Type: Review

References (54)

1. Alphand's technical training began in 1834 at the Lycée Charlemagne (Paris). He entered the École Polytechnique in 1835. In 1838, he entered the École des Ponts et Chaussées (est. 1744) to pursue specialized training for civil and structural engineering. Alphand's curriculum engaged the most current technology and design theory, especially for bridges. The head of the school during Alphand's time was Gaspard François Prony (1755-1839). Another influential faculty member was the author of Leçons sur L'application de la Mechanique (1826), C.L.M. Navier
2. Alphand rose quickly through the ranks of the civil administrative service, eventually becoming the Director of Parks after the fall of the Second Empire. The relevance of the École des Ponts et Chaussées for Alphand's urban design projects can be extrapolated from scholarship such as Antoine Picon, French Architects and Engineers in the Age of Enlightenment, Martin Thom, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992)
3. and Antoine Picon and Michel Yvon, L'inégnieur Artiste: Dessins Anciens de l'École des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris: Presses de l'École des Ponts et Chaussées, 1989)
4. Alphand's theoretical position not only reflected his understanding of the lineage of garden history and picturesque design treatises but also his strong technical background. As "the principal engineer by whose design these happy results have been achieved," he adapted picturesque ideals to his rendition of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont as a jardins irréguliers. " Bradshaw's Guide Through Paris and Its Environs (London: W.J. Adams & Sons, 1882), p. 85
5. J.C.A. (Jean-Charles Adolphe) Alphand, Les Promenades de Paris (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 1984)
6. Facsimile reprint of Les Promenades de Paris (Paris: Éditions J. Rothschild, 1867-1873). In this two-volume catalog raisonné of works he accomplished during Haussmann's administration, Alphand celebrates design solutions arrived at through engineering and design invention. He discusses construction practices and innovations employed to install and maintain the works, he enumerates and tabulates design materials and elements, and he calculates costs attached to his extensive civic improvements
7. For a succinct literature review of Second Empire urban design projects, see Heath Massey Schenker, "Parks and Politics During the Second Empire in Paris," Landscape Journal 14/2 (Fall 1995): 201-19
8. Maria Luisa Marceca, "Reservoir, Circulation, Residue: J.C.A. Alphand, Technological Beauty and the Green City," Lotus 30 (1981): 57-63
9. and Elizabeth K. Meyer, "The Public Park as Avante-Garde (Landscape) Architecture: A Comparative Interpretation of Two Parisian Parks, Parc de la Villette (1983-1990) and Paredes Buttes-Chaumont (1864-1867)," Landscape Journal 10/1 (Spring 1991): 16-26
10. Nicholas Green, The Spectacle of Nature: Landscape and Bourgeois Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (New York: Manchester University Press, 1990)
11. The 19th arrondissement was annexed by decree on June 16, 1859. The annexation encompassed the outlying suburbs between the wall of the Fermiers Généraux and the wall of 1850; it increased the area of the city of Paris by more than 150 percent and added nearly four hundred thousand to the population. See Roger Kain, "Urban Planning and Design in Second Empire France," Connoisseur 199/802 (December 1978): 236-46
12. In addition to the Buttes Chaumont, Alphand was in charge of the design for the Exposition grounds on the Champs de Mars and the Trocadéro grounds directly across the Seine from the exposition. He stated that, "Cet enterprise considérable [the Parc] fut commencée en 1864 et terminée au commencement de 1867: on volut que l'ouverture du parc coïncidât avec celle de l'Exposition universelle." Les Promenades, 203
13. Additional information on the exposition can be found in Ann Komara, "Art and Industry" at the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, MA thesis - University of Virginia (May 2002), 13-29
14. Charles Singer et al., eds., A History of Technology The Late Nineteenth Century c. 1850-c. 1900, vol. V (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 488. Béton was also called Portland cement or hydraulic cement for its ability to cure underwater. In 1824, Englishman Joseph Aspdin patented "an improvement in the Modes of Producing an Artificial Stone," a material which he regarded primarily as a stucco material to simulate Portland Stone
15. In the eighteenth century, water features played a key role in the picturesque ideal. British theorist Uvedale Price claimed that "the last finishing to places and pictures is water," with the caveat that the site be worthy of the effect. See John Dixon Hunt, The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620-1820 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988), 352
16. Alphand was charged with fixing the problem of the lakes at Boulogne, which had been poorly engineered by the landscape gardener, Louis-Sulpice Varé. Because of site soil and geologic conditions, water at the Bois de Boulogne would have simply seeped into the water table. See Georges Eugene Haussmann, Mémoires (Paris: V Havarrd, 1890-1893)
17. The Builder: An Illustrated Magazine for the Drawing Room, the Studio, the Office, the Workshop and the Cottage (London), "Concrete for Sea Works" XXIV (June 23, 1866): 469
18. See also M. Poirel's textbook for engineers in which he described his studies and applications, as well as the formulas and processes for making what he called hydraulic concrete: Memoire sur la Travaux à la Mer, comprenant l'Historique des Ouvrages executés au Port d'Alger, et l'Exposé complet et détaillé d'un Système de Fondation à la Mer au Moyen de Blocs de Béton (Paris, 1841)
19. Alphand's interpretation of the picturesque builds on a lineage of French landscape theorists from Claude-Henri Watelet (1718-1786), Jean-Marie Morel (n.d.) and Pierre Boitard (17897-1859) to Gabriel Thouin (1747-1829), whose work directly predicates Alphand's formal approach to the park's design. For more detailed distinctions in French picturesque attitudes, see Nicholas Green, The Spectacle of Nature: Landscape and Bourgeois Culture in Nineteenth-Century France (New York: Manchester University Press, 1990)
20. Laborers with equipment can be seen in the lower left of the dry lakebed of this period postcard view
21. Les Promenades, XXVII-LXV. Alphand distinguishes the jardins irréguliers and jardins anglais from the jardins pittoresque by virtue of fluid line, restraint, and degree of visual interest
22. A discussion of the idea of artifice within Alphand's realm of engineering is informed by Antoine Picon, "Le naturel et l'efficace Art des jardins et culture technologique," in M. Mosser, ed., Le jardin, art et lieu de mémoire (Paris: Les éditions de l'imprimeur, 1995), 367-96
23. "L'idée de nature chez les ingénieurs des Ponts-et-Chaussées," A. Corvol, ed., La Nature en Révolution 1750-1850 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1993), 117-25, 216-18
24. Edouard François André, L'Art des Jardins: Traité Général de la compositions des Parcs et Jardins (Paris: G. Masson, 1879), 450-71. André dedicated his treatise to Alphand, whom he succeeded as Director of Parks
25. For a summary of natural and artificial cements, see Tom F. Peters, Building the Nineteenth Century (London, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996), 61-63
26. Peters, Building the Nineteenth Century, 106. Peters makes an important distinction between transformation, "when information is altered or remolded while remaining within the borders of a field and applied to the same object ... [versus] translated by applying it across a border, moving it from one field or object to another. In the process of translation the train of developmental thought continues while the focus shifts to a new object."
27. Jean-Marie Jenn, Le XIXe Arrondissement - Une Cité Nouvelle (Paris: c. 1988), 68. Author's translation: "Rocaille grotte et stuc ciment ... sont l'occaision d'aborder un métier apparu vers 1824, qui s'est dévelopé à partir de 1850, et dont les ouvrages particulièrment nombreux et de qualité dans le parc des Buttes-Chaumont, celui de 'stucateur ciment' pour reprendre l'expression de l'un d'entre eux, Hilaire Muzard (1841-1893)."
28. André, L'art des jardins, 486-520
29. See also Charles Singer et al., eds., A History of Technology, The Industrial Revolution, c. 1750-1850, vol. IV (London: Oxford University Press, 1958)
30. Jacob Weidenman, Beautifying Country Homes - A Handbook of Landscape Gardening Illustrated by Plans of Places already Improved (New York: Orange Judd and Company, 1870), 31-32. Weidenmann, a graduate of the Munich Polytechnic School, designed and executed the construction of numerous public parks after emmigrating to the United States
31. Jenn, Le XIXe Arrondissement, 68
32. Idem. Author's translation: "Un mélange de chaux et d'argile sculpté et dessiné à la main ou moulé artisanelement. L'imitation de la nature se traduit tout d'abord par la simulation de la pierre sous ses differentes formes et selon ses usages divers: dallages, éboulis en vue du former une rocaille ou de conduire un torreat, passage souterrain garni de rochès rochers aux abords des culées du pont suspendu."
33. Exhibition on the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, City of Paris: 2000. Author's translation: "Les enrochements sont constitués de roches calcaire trouvées sur place, jointoyées au ciment et parfois peintes à l'eau avec un mélange d'ocre jaune, de noir de fumée et des vert."
34. William Robinson, The Parks, Promenades and Gardens of Paris, described and considered in relation to the wants of our own cities (London: John Murray, 1869), 62
35. André, L'Art des Jardins, 447. Author's translation: "Le parc des Buttes-Chaumont, où les rochers reproduisant bien la formation du calcaire grossier et du gypse parisien qui constitué le sol et le sou-sol de ces anciennes carrières."
36. Alphand didn't detail this bridge in Les Promenades, but he included a comparable detail for the "Pont de L'Île de Reuilly" suspension bridge and its rock abutments located in the Bois de Vincennes
37. Galignani's New Paris Guide (Paris: A. and W. Galignani & Co., 1868), 452
38. See also André, L'Art des Jardins, 486-521. André provided a "recipe" and tips for application and coloring for the stuc ciment in his section on "Travaux d'Execution - Rochers."
39. André featured a full-page image of the grotto and alluded to the geologic features as "wild nature." André, L'art des jardins, 507
40. Robinson, Parks and Gardens, 67
41. Peter Collins, Concrete, the Vision of a New Architecture; A Study of Auguste Perret and His Precursors (New York: Horizon Press, 1959), 28-34
42. Collins describes Coignet's role in the vast building schemes of the Second Empire and notes that Coignet's work received the "respectful attention" of the Society of Civil Engineers. Napoléon III had also become interested in the material and personally ordered experiments to be made with various applications of concrete. See also Singer et al., eds., A History of Technology ... 1750-1850, 448
43. and Leonardo Benevolo, History of Modern Architecture, vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1977)
44. Collins, Concrete, 36. Collins details developments shifting between France and Great Britain, with each country offering patents and counter-patents addressing various capabilities and applications. Following Aspdin's 1824 patent, J.C. Johnson manufactured the first "modern" Portland Cement in 1844. Coignet took out a British patent for a similar material in 1855 and continued to develop his techniques for industrial production. Vying with Coignet, Frederick Ransome opened a large factory works for his "New Patent Concrete Stone" in 1867. Joseph Tall was the first English building contractor to expand on Coignet's methods. His standardized form works, called "Tail's Patent Shuttering," received a gold medal at the 1867 Exposition Universelle
45. Singer et al., eds., History of Technology ... c. 1750-c. 1850, 451-90
46. Collins, Concrete, 34, 40-41
47. I based this assertion on comparisons with other known projects by Coignet. The work on the railroad walls bears much in common with other Coignet projects such as the Passy Cemetery wall and the reservoir at the Pare Montsouris. Further, Coignet's finances suffered greatly when the city of Paris did not pay him its debts between 1867 and 1871; it thus seems likely that his company, the Société Centrale des Bétons Agglomérés (founded in 1861), had significant contracts with the city
48. Robinson mentions rustically detailed outdoor furnishings in his book and particularly notes a cast iron seat from the 1867 Exposition with feet- and armrests rendered as tree branches. Alphand frequently used a version of this bench in the city's parks, including the Buttes Chaumont. Robinson, Parks, Promenades, 564
49. Collins, Concrete, 34. Quoting Moniteur des Architectes (December 1867), n.p. Collins referred to Viollet-le-Duc, who favored greatly Coignet's work: "In perfecting this material, M. Coignet has not only given it the principal role in masonry but, as a result of progressive experiments, has rendered it fit to replace the materials employed in our buildings: stone, brick, iron and wood."
50. Alphand doesn't describe the process for making these handrails. Historically, the detail is linked to Joseph Monier (1823-1906) who patented tubs for orange trees made of concrete with an embedded mesh of iron rods. I examined and photographically documented railings at the Pare des Buttes Chaumont, the Pare Montsouris, the Parc Monceau, and the Trocadéro on the Passy side (under repair in the summer of 2000). I could sometimes discern common molds but the general impression is one of a relative lack of repetition. In the few cases in which the railings were in need of repair, the iron reinforcing rods were evident
51. Alphand, Les Promenades, LIX
52. See again Nicholas Green, The Spectacle of Nature
53. Julie Wosk, Breaking the Frame - Technology and the Visual Arts in the Nineteenth Century (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 107
54. in reference to "The Mutual Interests of Artists and Manufacturers," Art-Union 10 (March 1, 1848): 69-70