Restored UNESCO Headquarters unveiled

25 September 2009

• © Lucien Hervé

The restoration of the modernist masterpiece that has served as UNESCO’s Headquarters since 1958 came to a successful end on Friday 25 September when the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, former Director-General Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, Martin Hirsch, French High Commissioner for Youth and French architect Jean-Loup Roubert inaugurated the born-again Paris landmark.

For Mr Roubert, “the main challenge in the restoration project consisted in finding the truth of this building in the modern context, revealing its original characteristics while catering for changes in technology and lifestyle over the past half century.”
The patina of age has been preserved in the building – designed by Marcel Breuer of Bauhaus fame, Pier Luigi Nervi and Bernard Zehrfuss (respectively from the U.S., Italy and France). It numbers 1,200 offices over an effective surface of 75,000m2 with a glass and concrete design that lets daylight reach down into two underground floors of office spaces wrapped around six sunken patios, another remarkable feature of the UNESCO compound.
The main seven-story building, which stands on 72 stilts, has succeeded in retaining its original feel despite the construction of a new entrance on the Avenue de Suffren to meet today’s security needs. Gone are the days when UNESCO’s Headquarters rose unprotected from the lawn, blending seamlessly with the crescent of public edifices on the Place de Fontenoy side and the residential buildings of the Avenue de Suffren. The compound is now walled and visitors are channelled through airport-like security controls. Mr Roubert succeeded in designing an entrance that blends with the building although it does not seek to ape its formal idiom.
The transparency of the façades has also been maintained despite the installation of air conditioning units along the lower tier of the office windows. This has been achieved by using reflective glass for the lower part of the windows, which, seen from the ground can barely be distinguished from the transparent glass used in the real windows above the units.
In the disencumbered main lobby of the Y-shaped building, users and visitors can again appreciate the play of natural daylight through the large glass panes over the rich grey tones of the smooth Norwegian stones on the ground. Now that the bookshop, kiosk and souvenir stands have been moved to the side the elegance of the structure, which brings the outside indoors, can be appreciated along with the art works that dot the lawns on both sides of the complex, except when white panels are used to hang temporary exhibitions in the lobby obstructing the view…
The 1,800 people who work here every day and the many more who do so occasionally - during conferences, workshops etc. - enjoy the added benefit of improved security, insulation, soundproofing and heating, newly introduced air-conditioning, modern wiring and wifi. A state of the art urban heat facility that represents a significant economy in energy consumption has been installed and the restaurant, cafeteria and kitchens have been totally remodelled.
No effort was spared in saving the “soul of the building,” to use Mr Roubert’s terminology, which manifests itself not only in the architectural construction but also in the works of art present all over the premises. Most of them were given to UNESCO by Member States and many are truly remarkable. Thus, Jan Arp’s mural sculpture, Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure, Giacometti’s Walking Man, not to mention works by Picasso, Miró and Calder, have retaken possession of their respective surroundings.
These surroundings, epoch-making though they are, bear the hallmark of traditional, artisanal techniques of builders in the 1950s to interpret the modernist design of architects who still used pens and pencils to draw the future. While building became increasingly standardized and industrialized over recent decades, the ancestral construction techniques have left their mark here and there, on the sweep of a ramp, the pattern of planks of wood that encased concrete pillars.
Equally “un-industrial,” was much of the modern Scandinavian furniture donated to the Organization in the early days… These modern classics inspire wistfulness in those reduced to ordering replacements from today’s lowly office goods catalogues. But the budget of ca. 100 million euros that was available for the entire restoration project could not be stretched to furniture as luxurious as the pieces given by Denmark in the 1950s to showcase its triumphant modern furniture manufactures.
Originally, some people considered the UNESCO building a monstrosity, shocked by the concrete apparition. The furore over the only major modern construction in Paris between World War II and the 1970s has long since died down. The restored building’s beauty can once again be fully appreciated - at least by those capable of recognizing that concrete is a as noble a building material as any.

• Author(s):UNESCOPRESS
• 25-09-2009