“Somewhere else starts here ........” With The « Vegetal Wall» of the quay Branly museum from Paris

This article is devoted to art, architecture and the urban landscape through the analysis of the quay Branly museum, located in Paris, on the left bank of the Seine: in an urban environment landmarked by the World Exhibitions from 1889 to 1937, (Champ de Mars, Trocadéro, Palais de Tokyo, Grand Palais, Orsay- a former train station, etc). One of the uncontested land markers of this urban landscape is the Gustave Eiffel Tower, (1889), even if we did need the series of canvases made by the painter Robert Delaunay to fix it into the Parisian imagination. Understanding that art can be used as medium to reveal a monument, - I formulate the following assumption, that art can conversely influence, either downstream, but this time, upstream of its creation. This is the case of the Branly museum, where contemporary art; (New realism, Arte povera, etc), has influenced certain architectural orientations. This introduces the following observation that the collections of the Quai Branly Museum not only dialog with each others, but also with those sheltering inside the Modern Art Museum of Paris, situated on the opposite bank of the River. In this context; the façade of the office building of the QBM “draped” by the French artist and naturalist Patrick Blanc, cannot be perceived as an isolated peace of work, because the «Vegetal Wall” is, in this case, a part of a global urban scenario intended to create a territory which is a passage or a “path which goes from one world towards other worlds”. “Native land, Somewhere else starts here ........” - is the title of the Cartier Foundation exhibition in Paris, presented in 2009, where the philosopher Paul Virilio exposed his concept of “Futurism of the instant”, which may help explain the current vegetal wall’s proliferation into urban environments.