Blog archive January 2017
23.01.17 / 01 / little work trip to paris
A weekend in Paris with my project team. First we went to see progress on our project for JP Morgan on Place Vendome, and a brief visit to Facebook. We visited some fabric and furniture showrooms and ended the day with a meal in Montmartre and a group photo on the steps of the Sacre Coeur.
And then to Maison et Objet, a design show at the Parc des Expositions. The venue has a Logan's Run air about it - 70s futurism. There should be a monorail. It would certainly help to get from one end to the other. The venue is huge and the show fills all of the eight halls. It covers just about anything that could go inside a home, or a hotel, or an office. There are several halls just devoted to homewares, or bathrooms, or domestic furniture, and one devoted to children's toys. We began with the hall of high end interior design - luxury items, major firms and designers, and some of the strange elaborate luxury that only the French do. Many of the set designs were astonishing. We found time to look at the more conventional office furniture in the next hall, and I managed to get a look at the children's toys. To see more would have meant spending several days there.
But we were heading to Versailles for dinner with friends, and then to the palace in the morning. Sadly the Queen's apartments were closed for restoration. We attempted the gardens, but only got to the lake before we had to turn back. It was fun to test the illusionistic aspects of the garden - how parts of the axis are concealed by changes of level, how perspective changes the apparent distances (so the lake looks nearer than it is!), how the ground floor and wings of the chateau disappear from view so that it seems smaller and closer.
Then it was back to Paris with time enough to see the Eiffel Tower and the Trocadero before we caught the evening Eurostar home.
