34 DIGS.NET
| 4.22.2022
R E S T O R E D | B O U R S E D E C O M M E R C E
designed by Henri Blondel is a circulation space. Staircases
curve the outside of the concrete walls "like a thin fruit peel,"
according to the program notes. The second-floor passage-
way allows one to walk around the cylinder and offers a new
perspective of the glass dome and the frescoes at its base. "On
the walkway that crowns the cylinder, as if in levitation, facing
the facades and the décor of the Bourse de Commerce, the
stuccoes masking the birth of the dome and the large painted
panorama"—one initially painted in 1889 by five artists and
touched up in 2018 by 24 restorers—"the visitor has a new expe-
rience of the building…This plan makes it possible to "obscure
the visitor's bearings in order to magnify an integrated, unified,
abstract space, in the spirit of the perfect form, emblematic of
the utopian [18th]-century."
Ando's dedication to shape is seconded only by his fidelity to
concrete. His mastery with the material, one that he manages to
infuse with an improbable lightness, is core to his architecture,
whether it is the transcendent Church of Light, where he carved
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a slight, cross-shaped aperture into a concrete wall to let in a
stream of natural light at the altar; or in the Bourse de Commerce,
where he inserted an enormous, 30-foot-tall concrete cylinder,
a stunning ground- to second-floor abstraction, within the walls
of the neoclassical rotunda. A move that proves—if proof is still
required—that Ando never met a slab of concrete he could not
shape into something magnificent.
First a granary, then a building busy with brokers, Bourse de
Commerce is another grand cultural inheritance for France,
whose cup in this particular category has long runneth over.
"The essential feature of its architecture—glass dome, open
cylinder, disc of the promenade—create a hypnotic circular
scenography" and a grand set piece besides. But one with
Ando's strong consideration for clarity, his appreciation for
presence, his devotion to the art of nothingness. With Pinault's
passion and backing, Bourse de Commerce is the ultimate
canvas, and for Ando, another masterpiece.
pinaultcollection.com/en/boursedecommerce
"The essential feature of its architecture—glass dome, open cylinder, disc of the
promenade—create a hypnotic circular scenography" and a grand set piece besides.
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