The primary differences between Northern and Southern Europe is that in the North it is not usual for the climate to produce temperatures of over 24*C; whereas uncomfortable winds speeds of over 8mph are commonplace.
Thus the objective in Northern Europe is to design squares that provide temperatures of more than 13*C, on as many occasions as possible, while minimising the number of days that the wind exceeds 8 mph. Wind speeds of less than 4 mph are generally the most comfortable, and ideally would only increase to 8 mph, as the temperature approaches the preferred maximum of 24*C.
In Southern Europe, the squares tend to be smaller and more enclosed, to maximise shading. There are more hours of sunlight, the temperatures are higher and the wind often less. Thus, the objectives in Southern Europe are to lower temperatures and increase air movement.
—Public Squares in European City Centers
Bob Giddings, James Charlton, Margaret Horne
Urban Design International (2011), Vol 16 No. 3, p.202-212
Pas une ville au monde n’offre le spectacle de ces boulevards parisiens, surtout a certaines heures. le soir, quand le gaz s’allume, quand theatres, cafes-concerts, grands bazars, estaminets dores ou pauvres, allument leurs ensignes et leurs candelabres, quand les fenetres des grands cercles flambent, quand sur le pave less trainees d’electricite font comme des rivieres d’argent. Toute l’actualite frissonne le long de ces tonnelles de verre, bariolees de reclames joyeuses.
“No other city in the world offers the spectacle of the Parisian boulevards, especially at certain times.
In the evening when the gas lights are lit,
when the theatres, cafe concerts, open bazaars, the bars for both rich and poor, light their signs and lamps,
when the windows of the great clubs blaze,
and the electric trails of light look like a river of silver on the pavement.
The whole contemporary life shimmers all along the great glass fronts of the arcades, iridescent with cheerfully coloured advertisements.”
- Valles quoted in Paris and the 19th Century
La vie parisienne est feconde en sujets poetiques et merveilluex.
—
“Parisian life is fertile in poetic and marvellous subjects.”
- Baudelaire quoted in Paris and the 19th Century
![- Café de la Banque de France. 1850. Museé Carnavalet, Paris.
“Both rooms above, as well as those below, were quite full of gay company, each party sitting round their own little marble table, with the large carafe of ice. [there was] brilliant light within, the humming crowd without - the refreshing coolness of the delicate regale…incontestably French.”
The City as Playground - The City as a Work of Art](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyipw5wUs71rnbqmio1_r1_500.png)
- Café de la Banque de France. 1850. Museé Carnavalet, Paris.
“Both rooms above, as well as those below, were quite full of gay company, each party sitting round their own little marble table, with the large carafe of ice. [there was] brilliant light within, the humming crowd without - the refreshing coolness of the delicate regale…incontestably French.”
The City as Playground - The City as a Work of Art
![- ‘Promenade in front of the Burgbastei (before 1800)’, after a watercolour by L. Janscha© Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. /Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.
“Vienna, with its harsh winters, could not indulge the year round in outdoor life as much as Paris. Nor, apart from the Ringstrasse, did it have the profusion of broad avenues suitable for conspicuous promenading. The proportion of its population able to devote its time to public idleness was smaller.
Yet for all the obstacles which its climate and street plan posed, Vienna placed greater stress on public life than Paris. To maintain a position based on symbolic rather than functional grounds, it was necessary to invest every aspect of behaviour with high ceremonial content. The permanent ‘self-representation’ demanded a formalized manner of moving, speaking, and dressing.’
Appearance along the ‘town-side’ of the Kartner Ring between 3 and 5 in the afternoon, to display oneself, see and be seen, acknowledge and be acknowledged, was one such duty, to oneself, one’s class, and one’s sovereign. they Corso was by no means composed exclusively of the high nobility. The demi-monde, the substantial bourgeoisie, and upper bohemia were there as well, observing and mimicking the display and rituals of their social superiors.
If the Ringstrasse was a theater writ large, so the theatre strictly speaking served as a microcosm of the greater Vienna.
The street in Vienna was an integral part and pleasure of the inner city. The first mild day of a February…the Prater offered ‘the spectacle of long rows of glittering equipages, elegant riders, and here and there a stroller’. Children play, dogs fight, clergy observe, gentlemen with swords bow politely to one another, ladies carrying fans engage in light conversation. The streets of the city were…pleasant places to walk, acceptable extensions of the reception rooms that looked out onto them
The street facade of a town palace [of Vienna] is alive with figurative sculpture, from the caryatides and atlantes flanking the entrance door and supporting the piano nobile to the heroic statues standing along the cornice. “
- The City as Playground - The City as a Work of Art](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyipllsUMK1rnbqmio1_400.jpg)
- ‘Promenade in front of the Burgbastei (before 1800)’, after a watercolour by L. Janscha
© Schloß Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H. /Schloss Schönbrunn Kultur- und Betriebsges.m.b.H.
“Vienna, with its harsh winters, could not indulge the year round in outdoor life as much as Paris. Nor, apart from the Ringstrasse, did it have the profusion of broad avenues suitable for conspicuous promenading. The proportion of its population able to devote its time to public idleness was smaller.
Yet for all the obstacles which its climate and street plan posed, Vienna placed greater stress on public life than Paris. To maintain a position based on symbolic rather than functional grounds, it was necessary to invest every aspect of behaviour with high ceremonial content. The permanent ‘self-representation’ demanded a formalized manner of moving, speaking, and dressing.’
Appearance along the ‘town-side’ of the Kartner Ring between 3 and 5 in the afternoon, to display oneself, see and be seen, acknowledge and be acknowledged, was one such duty, to oneself, one’s class, and one’s sovereign. they Corso was by no means composed exclusively of the high nobility. The demi-monde, the substantial bourgeoisie, and upper bohemia were there as well, observing and mimicking the display and rituals of their social superiors.
If the Ringstrasse was a theater writ large, so the theatre strictly speaking served as a microcosm of the greater Vienna.
The street in Vienna was an integral part and pleasure of the inner city. The first mild day of a February…the Prater offered ‘the spectacle of long rows of glittering equipages, elegant riders, and here and there a stroller’. Children play, dogs fight, clergy observe, gentlemen with swords bow politely to one another, ladies carrying fans engage in light conversation. The streets of the city were…pleasant places to walk, acceptable extensions of the reception rooms that looked out onto them
The street facade of a town palace [of Vienna] is alive with figurative sculpture, from the caryatides and atlantes flanking the entrance door and supporting the piano nobile to the heroic statues standing along the cornice. “
- The City as Playground - The City as a Work of Art
“Toward the side of the Rue du Faubourg, Saint Honore could be found ‘revolving circuses, various kinds of juvenile amusements, cafes, summer music halls, dahlia beds, fountains…on fine days the wide tree-shaded walks are crowded with pedestrians…the whole thing is as order as could be wished.”
The City as Playground - The City as a Work of Art
An essential quality of the Parisian townscape: its repetition of details, stretching as far as the eye can see:
A Parisian facade seems to be a drawing in stone, full size, literally an immense lithograph. a large, flat mass of stone wall, with few slightly projecting blocks, is carried up in the street line, and on it is engraven with the chisel the design of the architect, to scale, the projection of the pilasters and strings being about the proportion of the thickness of the ink lines on the paper design.On the large scale, ‘power, breadth, magnificence’, on the small, ‘refined beauty, serene or playful’.”
The City as Document - The City as a Work of Art
(via keriman)
The arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, the straight ranks of identical trees in the tuileries gardens, the interminable succession of he same features in every boulevard: not just the same block of flats - the same in dimensions, color of stone, architectural style, and general effect - but the same street furniture - lamp standards, fixed benches, bus stops, metro entrances, the same grills protecting the roots of the same trees - the same cafes with the same tables, chairs, menus, the same awnings advertising the same aperitif.
The City as Document - The City as a Work of Art
- Carriages on Avenue de L’Opera in Paris. Bettman. Corbis. Paris.
“What made Paris special was its exterior quality, caused by ‘the taste and ideas of a society…predisposed to live much more out of doors than indoors, and to display itself as often as possible in public promenades, in salons, at the theater’”
Paris was perpetually animated by the continual movement of a population of promenaders and idlers who have the air of being continually on holiday. Parisians, who have nothing in the world to do but divert themselves and others. The leisure class in Paris spent more of its leisure in the public view.”
The City As Playground - The City as a Work of Art
Places are public by virtue of their theatricality and their opposition to the domestic space of ‘at home’.
—
Marcus, Sharon - Haussmannization as Anti-Modernity: The Apartment House in Parisian Urban Discourse
“Architects discouraged decorating practices that made domestic interiors resemble streets. Formerly, slabs of concrete, stone or marble had been used both as flooring inside apartments and as pavement for streets, but now they began to be confined strictly to the street.
The street thus became a mineral realm whose hard, unyielding durability was perceptibly distinct form the more delicate, vegetal ground of the home.”
Marcus, Sharon - Haussmannization as Anti-Modernity: The Apartment House in Parisian Urban Discourse
Hotel de la Marine (Paris)
The hôtel de la Marine (also known as the hôtel du Garde-Meuble) is a building on place de la Concorde in Paris, to the east of Rue Royale. It was built between 1757 and 1774 on what was then known as place Louis XV, with a façade by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, Premier architecte du Roi and designer of the square. The identical building to its west now houses the Hôtel de Crillon.
Paris seemd a ‘vast gilded net…a great opulent and sensual city, living only for pleasure and glory.
The Boulevards are blazing…..the shops cast floods of brilliant light half across the street, and encircled the crowd in a golden dust.
The kiosks, which extend in two interminable rows, lighted form within, with their many coloured panes, resembling enormous Chinese lanterns placed on the ground..give to the street the fascinating and childlike aspect of Oriental fete.
The numberless reflections of the glasses, the thousand luminous points shining through the branches of the trees, the rapid motion of the innumerable carriage lights, that seem like myriads of fireflies set in motion by the wind…
The great flaming halls opening into the street, the shops which resemble caves of incandescent gold and silver, the hundred thousand illuminated windows, the trees that seem to be lighted, all these theatrical splendours…which now and then allows one to see the distant illuminations and presents the spectacle in successive scenes…
All this broken light, refracted, and mobile, falling in showers, gathered in torrents, and scattered in stars and diamonds, produces the first time an impression of which no idea can possibly be given.
de Amicis, 1878 quoted in Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History
People milled under the trees on the wide sidewalks, sat out in cafes to watch the crowds, or looked at the window displays in the great plate-glass windows of the new shops.
They could walk through the new department stores, and up and down their splendid curving staircases, or savour the novel excitement of passenger lifts, which gave changing vistas of the different galleries as they rose magically up and down.
Girouard, Mark - Cities and People: A Social and Architectural History
This shift does not indicate a loss of the domestic virtue, but a migration of it, as Parisians and Viennese alike seek to create a home in the public.
Public Space as Home: Paris and Vienna in the Fin-de-Siecle
Place des Vosges, Paris (by wakingphotolife:)
