This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.

Viaduc des Arts, originally uploaded by cgfan
Via City Comforts, who is all over the Seattle Viaduct hoopla, comes this fascinating (5 year old) article about the Viaduc des Arts, a former railroad viaduct, stretches east along the wide Avenue Daumesnil between the Place de la Bastille and city hall of the 12e Arrondissement. Instead of tearing it down, they created a series of craftsmen and artists lotfs:

The shops recall the history of the neighborhood, which was once the blue-collar home of artisans, craftspersons, and antiques shops. The shops, therefore, display the arts and crafts of today, some of them made on the premises. Each shop occupies a single arch of the old viaduct. The arches have been refaced in a handsome orange-red brick that deliberately recalls another historic icon, the famous Place des Vosges not far away. Parking is tucked almost invisibly underground. The shopfronts themselves are elegantly detailed in glass, metal, and wood in a taut, minimalist architectural language that is very much that of today and becomes a kind of modern craft in itself. The architect was Patrick Berger.
The shops, though, wonderful as they are, are less than half the story. The rest is the park upstairs. It’s called the Promenade Plantee. Three miles of the old track bed have been converted into a linear park, a kind of aerial nature walk in the city. The landscaping is a botanist’s dream. You’re never bored. Your path is endlessly varied. Some of the plants ripple in the wind like natural marshland. Others resemble formal parterres. In places, the park spreads out into playing fields and strolling parkland. At other times it narrows to a tight file edged by dark trees. Or it becomes a courtyard where oldsters, sipping their wine, watch kids playing games. Sometimes you walk through a trellised arbor. In one place, there’s a cave-like hideaway. In still another, the park shears its way through a new building, splitting it in half. The designers — Philippe Mathieu and Jacques Vergely — seize every chance to dramatize the anomaly of a linear park that slips through Paris like thread through a needle.

Remind you of anything?

On The High Line 04/23 by nicolaitan
Interesting; I just hope the Highline will be half as successful. Unfortunately, instead of artists lofts or workshops, I think that the Highline will, besides be a great urban park, foster luxury condos and high end hotels, thus proving to be a great opportunity lost.