Rennes - the city experience

Rennes is a city I find more and more alluring with each visit. It's been two years since I last spent regular time there and my short stay in the metropolis last week was a real tonic, full of stimulation and heady intake of luscious architecture. I had forgotten how essentially rural I have become.
It's not possible to understand a city from a guidebook: knowledge of history and architecture or even the best places to eat and visit can only take you so far. Any urban development is about shape and fluidity, the relationship between horizontal and vertical, space and structure. Walking without purpose is a fine way to start, taking the good with the bad, observing without judging. I wandered from the centre up to the Prefecture a few kilometres away without a map, moving slowly along residential streets and increasingly busy arterial roads. This was new territory for me as in the past I would take the metro or a bus out to the university area, but I felt a sudden sharp pang of recognition outside a perfectly ordinary chemist shop. This was unsettling until I later remembered a week in an appartment near the hospital with a sick friend many years ago. That was where I went to get her medicines. Cities store up emotional coinage in this way over a long period of time, perhaps more so than the countryside because urban experiences are more transactional.

Other ways of exploring towns can be based on fundamental units: a river, a cathedral, a high point. Anything with function has influenced its environment, and observation can be a satisfying way of coming to know the underlying harmonies and compromises of consciously developed space. Of course, history helps. In Rennes the abrupt change from the cathedral district, medieval finery in the form of narrow streets of glorious half-timbered houses with colourful carved decorative detail, to grandiose neo-classical public buildings and noble residences is unmissable. It is on too large a scale to envisage deliberate clearance and the disaster of a great fire (actually in 1720) is not hard to deduce.

But there is also a powerful punch of 20th century magic and post-war vivacity in Brittany's capital. The vibrant mosaics of Isidore Odorico (1893-1945) adorn St Georges swimming pool and a stunning appartment block in Avenue Janvier amongst other locations. Circling the centre like signposts to the future are beautiful high-rises, the work of architect Georges Maillols who arrived in 1947 to help rejuvenate the city. I have never felt a stronger emotional pull from a building than Les Horizons. It was love at first sight a long time ago, but our relationship has endured and matured.
That's the thing about Rennes - it's a city to observe and feel, a place to make the heart beat faster. Never mind the guidebook.

Falling in love again

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I've been in Rennes all week. Little leisure time, but did manage to spend a few minutes gazing at one of my favourite constructions in the world, Les Horizons. It's such a happy building, I have to smile every time I look at it.

And it always smiles back...

Rennes again

I've been working in Rennes this week, looking especially at modern art and architecture. The photos above show the sculptural shadow-play of Alignement du XXI siècle by Aurelie Nemours at Beauregard.
Below, Georges Maillols' Horizons tower block (1970), is still a mesmorising spectacle from any angle, like its contemporary the Tour de l'Eperon by Louis Arretche.

I was also on the Odorico trail. This famous mosaicist and football fan has left his mark on many buildings in the city.

Great trip! Now time to write it all up...

Rennes

Writing about Rennes at the moment, mainly on the architerctural development of the city in line with its political fortunes and redevelopment after the great fire of 1720. It's interesting that few observers over the centuries seem to have anything positive to say about the regional capital. In 1788 Arthur Young was surprised by the people's affection and support for the exiled Parliament despite the huge gulf between the nobility and the poor, and terrible living conditions at the lower end of the social scale. A French visitor in 1636 had never seen so many rats and mice in his life, and everyone complained about the smell ...

Another side of Rennes

I was in Rennes this week to give a guided tour. We covered the usual things - 19th century Italianate cathedral, medieval quarter, neo-classical public buildings and the famous Parliament building. All good, and remarkably quiet on the streets with the 60,000 students on vacation. In my own time I did a lot of walking to look at more modern aspects of Rennes' most interesting architectural range. Not nearly enough emphasis nor information is provided for tourists about this. I was just wondering how they managed to clean the windows at the Cité Judiciaire when the answer appeared rather startlingly. The Champs Libres is the 2006 cultural complex containing the library (glass), science museum (dome of planetarium) and ultra-modern Musée de Bretagne.

Rennes

Two days in Rennes, capital of modern Brittany, this week. It's not a city I feel especially at ease in, finding it less engaging than Nantes or Vannes, despite the breath-taking range of innovative architectural concepts. Religious buildings are varied and omni-present, likewise medieval colombage houses of many colours, but Rennes is hard to get hold of in a single grasp, slipping and shimmying away as the visitor grapples with each of its many salient parts.

I am pleased to meet up again with Pierrick Gavaud from Randobreizh to discuss my association's Days of Discovery event for September 2009, and with Michael Dodds, new head of tourism, who is generous with his time and attention to the possibilities of my Britons in Brittany project.