Hector Guimard

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Hector Guimard and his wife Adeline

Hector Guimard (born March 10, 1867 in Lyon , † May 20, 1942 in New York City ) was a French architect and designer .

Life

Guimard was one of the most important French Art Nouveau artists, who raised the postulate of the inseparable unity of architecture, furniture and decorative accessories. From 1895 a number of houses had been built in which Guimard could realize his ideas. In a portfolio ( L'Art dans Habitation Moderne from 1898) Guimard documents the designs and works for his first major commission, the Castel Béranger, Rue La Fontaine No. 60 in Paris , and confessingly lays his artistic credo of organic unity of architecture and spatial art. Guimard's creative will omitted no element of daily life, no detail appeared unimportant. For example, he created a bottle for the “Kantirix” eau de toilette on the occasion of the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 .

Guimard was the architect of the synagogue on Rue Pavée in the Marais , its only sacred building.

Many of the older station entrances to the Paris Métro are still equipped with the interwoven iron girders designed by Guimard.

  • Facade of the house of Hector Guimard at 22 Rue Mozart, ca.1910

  • Castel Beranger

  • Entrance gate at Castel Béranger

  • Metro entrance designed by Hector Guimard with interwoven iron girders

  • Original Guimard entrance, gift from RATP to Metro Montreal

Station entrances to the Paris Métro

Former entrance building of the Bastille station
Listed entry type "B" at Porte Dauphine station
Detail of the border, access to the Palais Royal - Musée du Louvre station

In 1899, the future operator of the Paris Métro , the Compagnie du chemin de fer métropolitain de Paris (CMP), launched a competition looking for a design for their underground stations. However, none of the drafts received could convince. Its president Adrien Bénard, an admirer of Art Nouveau, then suggested Hector Guimard, who did not take part in the competition, but that year he did. a. designed a prestigious tram stop in Caen . He commissioned him to develop forms that should be recognizable, but which should not suggest a descent into an industrial hell. The entrances should be inviting and their design should rather be reminiscent of branches and rabbit caves.

Four types of access were realized from Guimard's designs. Two large buildings were constructed at the stations Bastille and Étoile of Metro Line 1 . Their curved, ornate exterior should be reminiscent of Japanese pagodas . The entrance building at the Etoile underground station was demolished in 1926 with a technical structure also designed by Guimard. The striking building above the east end of the Bastille station disappeared in 1962.

Smaller covered access structures were built as type "A" (glazed roofs on iron supports) at the Reuilly - Diderot , Saint-Paul and Hôtel de Ville underground stations . The latter was later moved to Abbesses Station , where it still exists today.

The type “B” was similar, but more playful and elaborate, and one of the eight examples survived at the Porte Dauphine station . Such a structure originally stood at the Nation underground station .

Occasionally, Guimard designed special designs, such as a canopy resting on just three pillars at the Gare de Lyon station . The RATP has set up a replica of this structure at an entrance to Châtelet underground station .

From 1901 the entrances were no longer roofed. 154 metro entrances were equipped with the open standard type, 84 of which are still in existence in Paris. The stairwell is framed on three sides by a masonry base with a richly decorated, green-lacquered wrought-iron railing . Two curved, interwoven posts flank the shaft approximately at the level of the top step. They each carry a lamp with orange-colored glass at the curved tip. They are connected with a filigree cross member with a sign in the middle with the word METROPOLITAIN. Subsequently, from 1913, in the style of Guimards, illuminated information boards were set up opposite or to the side, which today show a city map with metro, RER and tram lines. The exits that used to be often separate were given appropriate railings, but no further indication of their function.

In 1902 there was a dispute with the CMP on a financial and legal level. In the following year, an agreement was reached that allowed the CMP to have other architects design the entrances. The stairways of the Opéra underground station were the first to receive stone balustrades in neoclassical style designed by Joseph Cassien-Bernard in 1904 .

As early as 1910, Guimard's style was no longer considered modern. The parts designed by him and manufactured by the art foundry Fonderie d'art du Val d'Osne were still attached to almost all entrances leading to underground stations until 1913 - albeit since around 1910 without his involvement. At particularly exposed underground stations such as those on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées , they were replaced by Cassien-Bernard-type balustrades. The Guimard parapets were partially retained, but the curved lanterns gave way to candelabra of the Val d'Osne (from 1913) or Adolphe Dervaux (from 1921) types .

The total of 87 Guimard entrances still in existence were placed under monument protection in 1978.

Web links

Commons : Hector Guimard  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The canon of the billionaire heir in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung of March 27, 2013, page 57
  2. ^ Jean Tricoire: Un siècle de métro en 14 lignes. De Bienvenüe à Météor . 2nd Edition. La Vie du Rail, Paris 2000, ISBN 2-902808-87-9 , p. 72 .
  3. ^ Brian Hardy: Paris Metro Handbook . 3. Edition. Capital Transport Publishing, Harrow Weald 1999, ISBN 1-85414-212-7 , pp. 52 .
  4. ↑ Mark Ovenden: Paris Underground . Penguin Books, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-14-311639-4 , pp. 24 .
  5. ↑ Mark Ovenden: op. Cit. , P. 22.
  6. ↑ a b Jean Tricoire: op. Cit. , P. 73.
  7. ↑ a b Mark Ovenden: op. Cit. , P. 25.
  8. ^ Jean-Pierre Rigouard: Le Métro de Paris. Tome II . 1st edition. Editions Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire 2003, ISBN 2-84253-847-1 , p. 35 .
  9. ^ Julian Pepinster: Le métro de Paris . Éditions La Vie du Rail, Paris 2010, ISBN 978-2-918758-12-9 , p. 92 .
  10. ↑ Les édicules d'Hector Guimard at lartnouveau.com, accessed on August 20, 2017
  11. ↑ a b Julian Pepinster: op. Cit. , P. 91.
  12. ^ A b Brian Hardy: op. Cit. , P. 53.
  13. ↑ Julian Pepinster: op. Cit. , P. 93.
  14. ↑ a b Jean Tricoire: op. Cit. , P. 74.
  15. ^ Gérard Roland: Stations de métro d'Abbesses à Wagram . Christine Bonneton, Clermont-Ferrand 2011, ISBN 978-2-86253-382-7 , pp. 155 .
  16. ↑ Julian Pepinster: op. Cit. , P. 95.
personal data
SURNAME Guimard, Hector
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French architect
DATE OF BIRTH March 10, 1867
PLACE OF BIRTH Lyon
DATE OF DEATH May 20, 1942
Place of death New York City