From alley to urban street; The Renovation of the 1 district in Paris with the special approach to streetscape

Streets are the main structural elements in creating urban facades and urban landscape as well as shaping citizen’s perception and interpretation from the urban landscape; that’s why they are considered the context for most important urban designs. Flandre Street (L’avenue de Flandre) in district 19 of Paris has witnessed various city projects for nearly half a century. The factor which determines Flandre Street is the bold action on the physics of the city which is in complete contradiction with urban conservative policy. In the 60s and 70s modern sculptural forms without any attention to the historic context and scale of the street with a mix of towers and fences formed the street’s façade. The Paris Municipality decided to design the central space with widening the street to modify the extreme differences between the two edges because it had affected the traditional and Parisian facade of the 19 district. After the second project Flandre Street was renamed to Flandre urban street.
This paper tries to analyze and assess the recent proceedings in Flandre Street based on Paris City paper documents in the past six decades and according to the process of façade formation in different periods on the consequences resulted from the followed approaches in its renovation.
Although in the two big projects where lots of effort and expenses were spent and the municipality of Paris tried to transform Flandre Street to North Champs Elysees according to the comprehensive plan of the second half of the 20th century, the project seems to be a failure due to lack of integrity. Each project focuses on the physics of the street and doesn’t consider them an integrated whole. Although the modern western edge obtained a specific characteristic as a separated large-scale street, the noticeable fact is that Flandre Street was formed and grew apart from its identity and origins and physical approaches to the recently approved reform plan did not work in  to forming the street’s façade. In other words in every project the street was analyzed into its contributing elements; In the Renovation Project, the body was the main issue and the in widening project, the floor was the most significant. Though each of the constituent parts of the street landscape can be the subject of a separate design, but the contest and executive and scientific proceedings should be also prepared. The definite use of imperative and technically restrictive comprehensive plan was the factor which resulted in the concept of decomposition of a whole street to separable parts in walls and floors due to the street management policies. While the urban façade is not formed by physical confinements and it is approved in multiple renovation experiences in Flandre Street within the last 50 years.