ABSTRACT
Recycling the city refurbishing, reusing, and redeploying buildings is a practice as old as the first primitive hut redesigned for fresh purpose. Ancien Regime public construction imposed newness over reuse; expansion over rehabilitation; and wastefulness over recycling. The political implications of a heavily polluted capital city for the tottering Ancien Regime should not be underestimated. Controls over private building in Paris were largely fragmented within a dense web of Ancien-Regime corporate institutions which jealously assured the quality control of construction. The profligate material culture of Ancien Regime construction was aggravated by haphazard development. Public construction was guided more by royal magnificence to celebrate the power of the Bourbon state than by urban planning. Ancien Regime municipalities, every bit as much as the Crown, often lost control of the administration in favour of "feudal" factionalism. In sharp contrast to Ancien Regime corporations Palloy made recycling central to his particular "brand" as contractor.
