concrete and gardens, two revolutions

Through a journey punctuated by models, plans, photographic archives, films and virtual reconstructions, “Paris 1925: Art Deco and its architects” allows us to grasp the decisive turning point which took place in the heart of the City of Lights with the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts.

This event revealed to the world a new style, which would only be called Art Deco in the 1960s. One hundred years later, the City of Architecture and Heritage revealed the springs of a double revolution which revolutionized both the appearance of the buildings and that of the gardens.

Concrete, material of the future

While the Eiffel Tower demonstrated as a grandiose symbol the reign of metal during the Universal Exhibition of 1889, reinforced concrete became the star of that of 1925.

“We were already building with cement in Antiquity, but at the beginning of the 20th century, technical innovations made it possible to obtain thinner, more load-bearing concrete. And it was during the 1925 exhibition that these advances were deployed and revealed to the general public,” observes exhibition curator Bénédicte Mayer, curator at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine.

Reinforced concrete allows for unprecedented structural daring. Designed by Robert Mallet-Stevens, the Information and Tourism pavilion, for example, the model of which is presented at the Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, is striking: a 36 m clock tower, formed of two reinforced concrete sails arranged in a cross, rises like a prow facing the future.

Another feat: Henri Sauvage’s Primavera pavilion, whose design drawings can be discovered, topped with a concrete roof in the shape of a hut. “These radical architectures herald a new era which will unfold throughout the world,” underlines Bénédicte Mayer.

The garden, a new creative space

But the 1925 Exhibition was also the scene of another revolution. For the first time, an international event has dedicated an entire section to parks and gardens.

Under the leadership of Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier, renowned landscaper and urban planner for the city of Paris, nearly twenty ephemeral creations amaze visitors. “The art of gardens is then recognized as a creative discipline, in the same way as architecture,” emphasizes Bénédicte Mayer.

No more Art Nouveau scrolls: the Art Deco garden is geometric and refined, mixing squares, rectangles, pools and plays of light. The rigor of the materials – concrete, ceramic, marble, wood – dialogues with the bright colors of the flower beds. Three trends then dominated: French neoclassical gardens, inspired by André Vera, where symmetry and proportions reign; the Mediterranean ones, signed Albert Laprade or Joseph Marrast, which play on light and southern essences; and finally, the avant-garde creations – the most spectacular – such as Gabriel Guevrekian’s garden of water and light, decorated with water jets and a rotating disco ball, or that of Robert Mallet-Stevens, punctuated with reinforced concrete trees over five meters tall.

A living legacy

The press and public were fascinated by these spaces, to the point that some of their creators saw their careers take off after the 1925 Exhibition: Joseph Marrast was invited to reproduce his plant arrangements in the United States. Gabriel Guevrekian invents, for his part, within the Villa Noailles in Hyères (Var) a cubist garden which has survived the century until today. “Unfortunately, few Art Deco gardens have survived,” regrets Bénédicte Mayer, “but some perpetuate this memory. » And the commissioner cites in particular the Boussard park in Lardy, in Essonne, designed by Joseph Marrast in 1927, or the Théâtre de Verdure by André Vera, in Courbevoie in Hauts-de-Seine.

By highlighting Art Deco creations around reinforced concrete architecture and the garden, the exhibition at the City of Architecture and Heritage tells much more than an aesthetic movement: the invention of a modern art of living. A century later, these utopias remain astonishingly relevant today. Structuring space while opening it to light and green spaces: this lesson in harmony continues to inspire architects and landscapers today.