ABSTRACT
Parc de la Villette was one of the Grands Projets sponsored by François Mitterand (1916–96 – President 1981–95). Proclaimed from the outset ‘the urban park for the twenty-first century’, it has brought near-messianic status, primarily from a phalanx of architects, to its designer Bernard Tschumi (b. 1944), and almost universal opprobrium from landscape architects. The open space occupies 35 hectares of a 55-hectare former industrial site abutting the Boulevard Périphérique in northeast Paris. The remainder of the site is occupied by the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie – a national science museum primarily located in the converted 1960s abattoir building; the converted nineteenth-century Grande Halle – also a former abattoir; the purpose-built Conservatoire de Paris (1990), the Cité de la Musique (1995), and the Philharmonie de Paris (2014). It is the largest public park in central Paris. The three parts of la Villette – science, music and park – are under the direction of three different organizations, each answerable to different ministers of the national government.
