Text and photos by Helle Nebelong, landscape architect, Denmark

Eight Accessible Kilometres along Le Grand Axe

A city of cities – and a city of parks: Paris is full of green glim-pses, and in the parks accessibility has usually been successfully integrated in the larger whole – with some excepti-ons. This is the tale of a trip along “Le Grand Axe” and visits to some other city parks.

Planned by the landscape architect, Le Nôtre, as early as the 17th century, Le Grand Axe emerges from the courtyard of the Louvre and ends eight kilometres to the north-west, in the suburb of La Défense.

From the small triumphal arch in the Louvre courtyard, the Arc du Carrousel, the axis proceeds through the Gardens of the Tuileries, which com-plies with Le Nôtre’s 1664 plan in a slightly modernised version, with its trim lawns, wide paths of white gravel and long rows of chestnut trees. The Tuileries Gardens are the oldest park in Paris and rank with the Luxem-bourg Gardens as the city’s classic gardens. Accessibility is excellent in both gardens.

Napoleon’s Triumphal Way

The axis crosses Place de la Con-corde and continues along Avenue des Champs-Elysées, Paris’ most fashionable shopping street. The paving of this 71 metre wide thoroughfare has recently been renovated and all the street furniture gathered within defined spaces, away from the walking areas. At the end of the Champs-Elysées, at Place Charles de Gaulle (the Etoile), stands the celebrated Arc de Triomphe.

From here, the vista stretches on to Le Grande Ache, or L’Arc de Triomphe de l’Humanité, designed by Danish architect Otto von Spreckelsen and built in 1989.

Excellent parking conditions and lifts provide easy access to the Parvis, the square in front of the cube, while suspended lifts soar up to the top of the 100 metre high cube.

La Villette

In several of Paris’ new parks, efforts have been made to incorporate accessibility in the architectural considerations from the planning stage. Rails, ramps, skid-proof coatings and lifts have become integrated parts of a harmonious whole, so that it does not leave the impression that “this is really a disabled solution”!

In 1982, the French-Swiss architect, Bernard Tschumi, won an international competition for ‘The urban park of the 21st century’. A total of 460 proposals had been submitted from 41 countries. Tschumi’s plan for the Parc de la Villette consists several superimposed layers: a North-South and an East-West axis, 26 red pavilions (‘folies’) very precisely placed as landmarks in an overall grid, the variety of surfaces and the meandering path that winds through the park like a coil of film, passing eleven exceptional garden rooms that play the part of pictures in the film.

La Villette, as the park is called by the public, was opened in 1991 and is the largest park in Paris. Each year, it attracts more than 10 million visitors.

Le Ponton zig-zags over 'jungle' spaces in the Jardin Atlantique. Blind people have no difficulties finding their way through the variety of smells, sounds, ligt and shadow.

The Jardin Atlantique

In 1994, a hanging garden was opened above the Gare Montparnasse, filled with delightful adventures for plant enthusiasts and for people who just want to enjoy the unexpected green luxuriance that nestles among the blocks of flats. A tempting lift, which suddenly appears in the middle of the pavement in the hectic street-life, with its abundance of cars, buses, bicycles and pedestrians, will take you straight up into the green oasis. When you get out at the top, an equally attractive foot-bridge, Le Ponton, invites you to stroll above a variety of garden ‘rooms’.

After contemplating them for a while from above, you may then decide to go down into any of these ‘rooms’. The Garden of Silence is a circular room whose walls have been tiled with a particular type of stone. At a slight knock, these stones will ring out the most beautiful sounds.

The Garden of Silence in the Jardin Atlantique has walls tiled with a particular type of stones, which make beautiful sounds when knocked slightly.

The Bercy Park

The Parc de Bercy (1992-1995) inclu-des Le Palais Omnisports, which is used for sports festivals and concerts. The building is almost the shape of a pyramid, and its outside walls are covered with grass.

Lifts and a huge flight of stairs lead from the lawn to a plateau overlooking the Seine and offering a splen-did view of the new French national library, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, built in 1995, which is beautifully situated opposite the Quai Francois Mauriac.

How to make a well-intentioned initiative fail: When installing the ramp at the promenade on the Quai d'Orsay, somebody forgot to provide proper drainage.

One small Sigh

Even though Paris’ parks and urban spaces are run at a very high level of activity, they – unfortunately – fail to escape the classical blemishes which tend to make outdoor spaces inaccessible. The cause is often no more than insufficient care and maintenance of gravel paths. Rain and foot traffic wear the surface down until it subsides: the result is cavities, puddles and depressions that may be impossible to negotiate in a wheelchair.

This can be overcome by building solid foundations and making sure that care and maintenance plans include specific attention to continued accessibility as the park matures.

Published in Crisp & Clear No. 2, July 2000