Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine between 1853 and 1870, directed with great success the transformations of Paris during the Second Empire under the protection of Napoleon III, deepening the vast renewal plan established by the Simeon Commission.
The transformations that he carried out were of such magnitude that we currently speak of Haussmannian buildings due to the numerous buildings built along the wide avenues that crossed Paris under his responsibility, works that gave this city the face that we currently know.
The importance of Haussmann lies in the fact that he established a policy that facilitated the flow of both population and goods by a government-protected and by water, since he was convinced that the hygiene theories inherited from the Enlightenment were more than necessary to adopt as a result of the cholera epidemic registered in 1832.
At that historic moment, this campaign was baptized and made known as "Paris beautified, Paris enlarged, Paris sanitized."
In 2023, in line with the "Paris Smart City 2050" ecological transition plan, launched in 2014 by the firm Vincent Callebaut Architectures on the basis of the "Climate-Air-Energy Plan" for the City of Paris and the Municipal Urban Planning Services , said team decided to explore, through new tools of AI, the concept of climate and energy solidarity between Haussmann buildings of immense energy consumption.
Through a sensitive and very deep analysis, Vincent Callebaut Architectures sought to preserve, in the most witty, the historical heritage of the French capital.
Therefore, they came up with the idea of creating islands of urban freshness by repatriating pieces of nature, biodiversity and urban agriculture in the heart of said city.
This would then lead to the construction of the unique Haussmann 2.0 building with a bioclimatic architecture approach, which aims to integrate renewable energy into buildings built with bio-based materials (such as cross-laminated wood, rammed earth, hemp, solid structural stone, bamboo and straw), which would allow it to produce its own energy and recycle all its waste, thus making an important contribution to achieving climate neutrality by 2050.
The result of this spectacular and futuristic architectural proposal is an interesting symbiosis of the humanity-nature couple.
Undoubtedly, this desire to invent resilient urbanism on a human scale, imagined for and in consultation with Parisians, could be part of a new campaign titled “Resilient Paris, Green Paris, Breathable Paris”.
