Though “adaptive reuse” has become a trendy term, the concept is hardly new, as evidenced by a building like Paris’s Palais de Chaillot. Constructed in eclectic Italianate style by Gabriel Davioud for the 1878 Exposition Universelle, the Palais du Trocadéro, as it was initially known, embraced its sloping Seine-side site with two curved gallery wings flanking a giant concert hall. Five decades later, it was transformed by the architects Jacques Carlu, Louis-Hippolyte Boileau, and Léon Azéma for another world’s fair, the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques (today remembered for the architectural face-off between the Russian-Soviet and Nazi-German pavilions). After demolishing Davioud’s auditorium to create a plaza, the trio widened his exhibition wings and dressed them up in a streamlined stone veneer of Art-Deco classicism. Once the fair was over, new uses were found for the Palais, among them a national maritime museum—Musée national de la Marine, or MNM—which has shared the western wing with the Musée de l’Homme (Museum of Mankind) since 1943. Little touched in the eight decades that followed, the MNM has just reopened after a major makeover by Paris-based h2o architectes in partnership with the Norwegian firm Snøhetta.
Palais de Chaillot gently curves across its site. Photo courtesy of h2o architectes, click to enlarge.
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.