A bit of Nantes, some architecture and an elephant

It has been a while since we have been to a largish city and it was a bit of a shock.

Firstly, Dora is really a country girl. All that rushing traffic, jostling for position. Not knowing which lane you need to be in, because you are not sure which way you are going. It was midday, but the traffic was still bad. In the countryside, everything closes down from twelve till three. This was a proper city. We negotiated the one way streets and the bus lanes. Trams were a bit of an unknown to us as the tracks cross in and out of the roads. Do they stop for you? What if you get caught in the way? It was all quite stressful. This was amplified because of a lack of map, we do have an offline European map on the laptop, Autoroute by Microsoft. We will review this in a later post.

Eventually, after what seemed like hours we had located the tourist information office and found a car park which was adjacent to the station. We  didn’t want to leave Dora on the street, she is too bulky and bits stick out. The car park wasn’t too busy. She would be alright here, but it was limited to two hours! We would have to be quick.

It was Susana’s idea to come to Nantes, and I had been doubtful. So far the stress had confirmed my doubts, but as we headed off to the information office I started to feel that it was good to be back in a city. Opposite the office was the castle, which we were not going to visit, we wanted to see ‘The elephant’.

This was opposite the castle. So for a bit of frivolity, maybe sculpture. Presumably a temporary structure made from hazel which had been constructed in the moat, unfortunately it had lost its leaves, or maybe it was meant to be like this. Really lovely quality of space though.

When you cut off sticks of hazel and put them in the ground they should re-root and sprout leaves. A real growing building.

At the information office we picked up a map with a walking tour, which took us to where we wanted to go. We stepped outside and followed the green line. Even this simple task we were not that good at. You would  think it would be easy, not for us. Our attention span is too short. We kept forgetting about it and when we remembered it had disappeared. We would have to retrace our steps.

We came across this children’s park. All playgrounds should be like this. Really simple forms, creating a dragon, that even breathed fire!

 

After crossing the river we found this. Later research told us it was by one of France’s most celebrated architects, Jean Nouvel, who has recently finished an office building in the City of London, next to St. Pauls called New Change. This was the Palais de Justice, not sure what that is, maybe law Courts? It is certainly grand, with a simple language together with an elegance and rhythm. The grand public space, however, is completely devoid of life, a wasteland, lacking in animation. It is almost too big, a little bit wasteful for the place. We moved on.

This appealed to me. A nice use of timber. The vertical blades shading the windows and controlling the view.

Nice clean detailing too.

This one was quite wild, but behind it a simple concept. How do you make a curvy building out of straight pieces, find something that bend easily and overlap them.

I thought this was very successful and would have created really interesting views out, would have shaded the building well. Not sure how easy it would be to clean though.

Reasonably clean detailing too.

Very clean and elegant, and probably cheap too.

But eventually we got to our destination, but no sign of the elephant. Just these old warehouses that had been refurbished,

Another good use of timber, which creates a nice rhythm.

At last the elephant. Only the French could do this. A mechanical beast, one you can ride on. We didn’t bother. We thought the view was much better from the outside. Wonderful movement which you can see in the video below. Amazing that he can take take three legs off the ground at the same time!

Incredible detail.

And superb fun

 

GDR