Hector Guimard

I have already previously mentioned and shown some of the famous Paris metro entrances my Hector Guimard (1867-1942). Guimard did also a lot of other things. He was basically an architect, working during the Art Nouveau period (with names like Horta, Gaudi), but not really pretending to belong to the movement.
He lived and worked in the southern part of the 16th ardt. and here you can find a great concentration of buildings he designed, although there are a few other ones around Paris and in the province. (If you feel for a nice walk, at the end of the post you can find a list and where to find these buildings.)

Typical for Guimard and Art Nouveau is to combine the building structure and the decoration, using steel and sometimes armed beton (which both were new then). The later Art Deco built first and then added the decoration.

Guimard was in fashion for a rather short period around the turn of the centuries and a lot that he created has later disappeared. He is now again in fashion and today we seriously regret all that has got lost, including a number of metro station entrances and buildings. One remarkable creation was a concert hall (also in the 16th arrondissement, “Humbert de Romans”) which was demolished only after a few years (the owner went bankrupt).

Guimard became famous at 30 with the building of Castel Béranger. This was just before he created the metro entrances and you can clearly recognise the style.Most of the remaining buildings cannot be visited and some are even difficult to see from outside as they sometimes are in small, private, streets. This part of Paris is full of those (fashionable and expensive). I managed to squeeze in to some of them, but not the way I would have liked. Narrow streets and parked cars make it also difficult to get the views you wish.

One building was temporarily open for public, Hôtel Mezzera, from where I have also some pictures of the interior. Remarkable is that Guimard designed everything, inside decoration, furniture, lamps, stained glass windows… There were 30 Guimard buildings within the area I visited. 17 remain and they are today classified, at least for the exterior part, in a few cases also for the interior. This area was very village like when these houses were built. That gave more space for innovation than if the Haussmannian rules from the centre of Paris would have to be followed. I will revert with some other architectural innovations from the same area. It’s worth looking on Guimard’s work in detail and I would recommend that you have a look on the original photos on my other blog, “Peter – photos”.