Francois Roche is currently leading a collective resisting to the developing project to rebuild Paris’ Zoo in Vincennes. In fact, this zoo, famous for its numerous artificial mountains is the object of a quasi-total reconstruction in an ambiguous semi-private contract lead by the omnipresent building company Bouygues (who also owns the main private TV channel in France and whose president Martin Bouygues is well known to be Nicolas Sarkozy’s buddy !).
Francois Roche is therefore proposing an information blog that gathers many precious and interesting documents about the zoo and its history and also invite people to sign a petition by sending name, title and nationality at [email protected]
This invitation also insist on the fact that Bernard Tschumi, the architect of the project cannot be personally considered as responsible of such a problematic project.
The following text explains more in detail what is at stake in this combat:
Who’s got the authority to raze the ZOO ?
The erasing will start this August, behind the fence, hidden from the public, by the private client and construction company “Bouygues,” without any survey, any control, and any rights.
The procedure comes from the concession that French administration transfers through a PPP(partenariat public-privé) protocol to “privatize” public area, to minimize the cost and negate any intelligence of production. The Bouygues Company is in charge with a concessionary contract to manage both the renovation and managing operation…all uses, economic and strategic, of the site.
The first action of this company will be to erase everything (except the main mountain), to transform the ZOO with drastically low budget through a cheap and chips concept with an hypothetical phantasm of rationalization and expertise, led on by citizens’ “taste” and willingness for a ‘clean vision of nature’…what a fucked up nightmare of normalcy!
Imagine the same with “le parc des Buttes Chaumont” from the XIXth or “les fabriques” and Grotto from “Hameau de la Reine” or “Desert de Retz” in XVIIIth century.