Haussmann, Sitte and Streetscapes

Clare Field

Whilst they are not complete opposites, Georges-Eugene Haussmann and Camillo Sitte are two key figures in the urban planning world whose contrasting ideas and influences can still be seen in cities around the world today.

Georges-Eugene Haussmann (commonly known as Baron Haussmann), was asked by Louis Napoleon in 1853 to put his vision of the redesign of Paris into practice and, thus, started his tenure as prefect (Van Zanten, 1994). The emperor was convinced that the France’s main problem was Paris and it’s warren-like state with narrow streets and laneways (Nichols, 2015). As a result, Haussmann redesigned Paris with a series of new thoroughfares and boulevards, leading to main monuments in Paris and, later, out to the new annexed arrondissements. These projects, however, were already underway when Haussmann arrived on the scene as prefect. “The great plan of late 1853 was not one drawn on a blank sheet of paper but on the contrary was engendered from a web of ideas…asserting themselves around [Haussmann]” (pg. 199).

“On his own estimation, the new boulevards and open spaces displaced 350,00 people;… by 1870, one-fifth of the streets in central Paris were his creation; he had spent … 2.5 billion francs on the city; … one in five Parisian workers was employed in the building trade” (Clark, 1984, pp. 37). The creation of these new boulevards, however, resulted in gentrification, with the amount of destroyed housing along the Avenue de l’Opera illustrated in Figure 1. Nichols (2015) makes note of the creation of the boulevard de Sebastopol resulting in 40 streets lost, 2000 dwellings lost and 20,000 people displaced.

Figure 1: Plan for Avenue de l’Opera (Brack)

In the early 1860s, around the time when the original projects of 1853 were completed or almost finished, “scale changed, focus was lost, coordination lapsed” (Van Zanten, 1994, pp.199) - “inflections, elaborations, and extensions” of the initial project “got out of control” and sparked the 1867-1869 financial crisis, consequently resulting in Haussmann’s dismissal. It was the incredible success of the first decade of work that made these new projects seem feasible, but in the end, Haussmann had great difficulty with the state’s budget.

As Nichols (2015) argues, Haussmann’s influence can be seen in cities today other than Paris. Swanson Street in Melbourne with the streetscape depicting the shrine of Remembrance, as well as Royal Parade (Nicholas, 2015) are just two examples that stem from the idea of Haussmann’s wide boulevards in Paris. He also makes note of the Benjamin Franklin parkway, built in Philadelphia in 1917 and the Ville Radieuse designed by Le Corbusier in 1924, which appears more radical than the designs of Haussmann (Nichols, 2015).

Camillo Sitte was prominent roughly 40 years after Haussmann and his ideas were vastly different. As Collins and Collins (1965) argue, Camillo Sitte was raised amongst an “atmosphere of crafts, beauty and somewhat non-conformist creativity” (pp. 8). He was greatly influenced by the artistic and architectural background of his father, Franz, who likewise was “exposed to artistic influence” (pp. 5) from a young age.

He finished high school in 1863 and “entered the atelier of the architect Heinrich von Ferstel in the Technische Hochschule” (Collins & Collins, 1965, pp. 9). He studied not only art-historical and archaeological studies, but also the physiology of sight and space perception. His teacher Rudolph Eitelberger encouraged Sitte’s artistic endeavours such as rendering works of art and is said to be the influence from whom his interest in town planning derived (Collins & Collins, 1965).

In 1873, Sitte’s independent architectural career was launched when the design of the church of Mechitarists (not far off the Ringstrasse in Neubau) was passed over to him from his father. Just two years later, he was invited to become the director of the State School of Applied Arts in Salzburg; a position which Eitelberger had recommended, but to which his father adamantly objected (Collins & Collins, 1965). Before their departure to Salzburg, Sitte snd his wife Leopoldine were married in the Mechitaristen church, the design of which Collins & Collins (1965, pp. 10) describe as “novel; …the first church building to resume an ordered Renaissance appearance after the fad for the medieval”, reflecting Camillo’s “non-conformist” character.

Nichols (2015) suggests that Sitte is not necessarily the diametric opposite to Haussmann, but provides an excellent contrast to his views on city planning. According to Van Zanten (1994), Haussmann was “a practical man” whose Nouveau Paris has been described as “the solution to problems rather than the imposition of an ideal” (pp. 199). Sitte, however, was very much concerned with the town planning as “one aspect of a greater totality of the arts (Gesamtkunstwerk) of which city building was only a part, albeit a totality of several arts in itself” (Collins & Collins, 1965, pp. 14). Site also spoke of French culture, remarking that he “could not understand it, did not want to understand it, and that anyway it counted for nothing” (pp. 15).

In line with Sitte’s artistic driven views was his desire to re-establish a system of organic town planning (Nichols, 2015), incorporating the organic, romantic nature of winding streets that twisted and turned to reveal hidden streetscapes. Whilst this is a complete contrast to Haussmann’s wide boulevards of Paris, with key visual points at the ends of the streets, both design ideas can be seen in cities around the world, reflecting the individual nature of those particular places.  

References

Brack, M. Plan for Avenue de l’Opera. Architecture and Society III, 19th and Early 20th-Century Urbanism. Retrieved from http://archsoc.westphal.drexel.edu/New/ArcSocIIISA9.html on 3/4/15

Clark, T. J. (1984). The Painting of Modern Life. Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Collins, G. R. and Collins, C. C. (1965). Camillo Sitte’s Background, Life and Interests. In G. Collins and C. Collins, Camillo Sitte and the Birth of Modern City Planning (pp. 5-15). New York: Random House.

Nichols, D. (2015) Haussmann, Sitte and Streetscapes. Lecture delivered for Urban History, Melbourne, 1/4/15.

Van Zanten, D. (1994). Haussmann, Baltard and Municipal Architecture. In Building Paris: Architectural Institutions and the Transformation of the French Capital, 1830-1870 (pp. 198-213). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.