Les frigos
Coordinates: 48 ° 49 ′ 53 " N , 2 ° 22 ′ 44" E
Les Frigos is an artist collective in the 13th arrondissement of Paris . The building is a former cold store (fr. Le frigo - the refrigerator) and is located not far from the Gare d'Austerlitz on Rue des Frigos. The Quartier de la Gare , 50th district of the city, was redeveloped from the 1970s onwards. Industrial facilities and wholesale markets have been replaced by modern office buildings, the best known of which are the new Bibliothèque nationale de France and the University of Paris VII . Les Frigos is one of the few remaining old industrial buildings alongside the former Grands Moulins de Paris mill .
history
After the First World War , the cold storage facility was built by the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Orléans (PO), the country's second largest private railway . In the neighboring Ivry-sur-Seine at the gates of Paris, the large transshipment station for refrigerated goods Paris-Ivry was completed in 1921 . At that time the building had direct rail access. Les Frigos is one of the last remaining buildings in the complex.
After Paris was occupied by German troops in 1940, the Austerlitz camp was opened in November 1943 as one of three sub-camps of the Drancy assembly camp . About 65,000 people were deported from Drancy , mostly French Jews. In the vicinity of the Gare d'Austerlitz, 400 people were forced to do hard labor.
Since 1938, the PO company belonged to the state-owned SNCF , which also took over Les Frigos. When in 1969 the wholesale market from Paris des Halles quarter final of the city center via the Metro -Station Châtelet Les Halles to Rungis and La Villette was moved to the center near the train yard Paris-Ivry lost its raison d'etre. For the next 15 years, Les Frigos stood empty.
From the 1970s onwards, the entire quarter was redeveloped and transformed from an industrial area into an office district. Since 1985, this has mainly happened under the aegis of the Société d'économie mixte d'aménagement de Paris (Semapa). In 1980 the SNCF rented the building to 15 artists, and since 1985 Semapa has been managing the building for the SNCF. Today around 200 artists work in Les Frigos, including actors, painters, photographers, graphic artists and sculptors. Some of them also live there.
