Il ‘Palais de Tokyo’ di Parigi. Estetica, economia e funzione nel progetto di restauro. Limiti e nuovi orizzonti

The ‘Palais de Tokyo, site de création contemporaine’ is a project by Anne Lacaton e Jean-Philippe Vassal. The structure dates 1937, built on the occasion of the Universal Exposition in Paris as a Palais de Museés. After a long history of transformations, the last project for reuse was that of a ‘Palais du Cinema’, but the works never ended, and the building remained as a sort of contemporary ruin. In 1999, Catherine Trautmann, French Ministry for Culture and Communication, decided to set in the building a new contemporary art centre. The assigned budget was low, and the designers took this as an advantage of creating an architecture characterized by the contrast between the monumentality of the facade and the roughness of surfaces in the inner spaces. This condition of indeterminacy in inner spaces defined the very identity of that space. An idea of conservation based on the experimental treatment of surfaces where the signs of time want to provoke an aesthetical experience. The aim of this paper is to investigate, taking the Palais the Tokyo as an example, new chances in conservation processes connected to the role of economy, the treatment of surfaces, the consideration of architectural elements as works of art or icons of memory, in the perspective of a new aesthetic.