Arrondissement-on-the-Edge

NZ-born architect Brendan MacFarlane is playing a major role in the redevelopment of Paris’s 13th arrondissement. The planning project for the French capital’s “nouveau quartier” is known as Paris Rive Gauche, and has been in progress since 1996. MacFarlane, who is one half of Paris-based architecture firm Jakob + MacFarlane, won the development rights to a turn-of-the-century dockside depot on the banks of the Seine. The Docks de Paris building will house cafés, shops, a landscaped roof terrace, exhibition space for contemporary design, and the French Fashion Institute. “When it works, that collective nature can be really wonderful,” he says of the group spirit driving the area’s redevelopment. “Sometimes having to have so many opinions and agreement can be a nightmare but, when everyone comes together around a table and it works, it can be amazing. I don’t think this is an experience that will be repeatable.”