June 2016 / 144 pages / 22 x 28 cm
NEW PRICE : 9,90 €
Bordeaux in 101 sites & buildings is the best publication to present a city which is definitely done with the “Sleeping Beauty” cliché. Visitors, in holidays or on a business trip, can take advantage of this special issue and discover the unique cultural diversity of Bordeaux.
Bordeaux is a fascinating city which has undergone spectacular metamorphosis over the last twenty years. The advent of the tramway has profoundly transformed how it was perceived, first by its inhabitants, and then by visitors and tourists. This new network has freed up circulation and paved the way for far-reaching urban redevelopment.
The latter is still in progress, spreading like a spider’s web across the city, gradually encompassing the entire conurbation. It is a quite different means of transport which is now bringing change in its wake. The high-speed rail line linking Bordeaux to Paris, with a travel time of just over two hours, is bringing transformation to the city’s southern sectors around the railway station, as part of a national redevelopment project known as Euratlantique.
From tram to train, left bank to right, Médoc to Landes, Bordeaux Métropole (the conurbation’s new name) is pulsating with renovation, transformation and invention. Such projects include the wet dock district and Cité du Vin, Rives d’Arcins and construction of a new bridge entrusted to Rem Koolhaas, La Bastide with its superb municipal archives building, designed by talented Belgian architects Robbrecht & Daem, and the redevelopment of the GHI buildings of the Grand Parc by Lacaton et Vassal for housing agency Aquitanis…
Yes, the fascination Bordeaux exerts springs from its capacity for renewal. Listed as a World Heritage site by Unesco in 2007, the city remains a hotbed for contemporary architectural creation, expressed not only through public building projects, but also private housing. A sense of historical continuity flows seamlessly from Antiquity to the current day, with its established specificities of course (pervasive Classicism), but also countless surprises (flourishing Art Nouveau and Art Deco) making any visit to the city intra muros at once captivating and exciting.
The aim of this special edition, the 9th in the series, here updated, is to provide the reader with tools for understanding and discovering the city. It focuses on 101 buildings, but in fact embraces far more through texts and images reflecting man’s inventiveness down the years. It offers a well-documented, appreciative journey through time and space, reflected in the 101 faces of a city whose beauty quite takes the visitor’s breath away.
