After the refusal of two building permits, will a third come to relaunch the battle around the former Rouchon photo studios, rue du Fer-à-Moulin (Ve), where flashes have long crackled around movie stars, the song, and star models?
The Fer-à-Moulin collective, created by local residents to combat the transformation of this mythical place, imbued with an almost nostalgic glamor with the typical architecture of the industrial past of the 5th, with its jagged zinc roofs, its cobblestones and its weight scale, oscillates between the satisfaction of having "won" by knockout against the owner and developer, and the fear of seeing a new project submitted to the urban planning department of the City of Paris.
Too “oversized” projects
“It's in preparation, and we're afraid that the promoter will want to move quickly so that the project is validated before the future local urban plan, which will no longer allow this type of project!
” believe to know the leaders of the collective.
At the end of April, however, they were delighted to learn that the second permit had been revoked, barely a year after its first version.
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"It was certainly thanks to our action and the opinions calling for the preservation of the place", they believe, evoking the unfavorable opinion of the mayor of Ve, Florence Berthout (DVD), echoing that of the Commission du Vieux Paris.
“This second project did not change much, the elevation went from 4 to 2 floors so the building was lower, but the part condemned to demolition was twice as large as in the first version, they explain.
It didn't change anything in the end: this project was as oversized as the previous one, and still in total rupture with the preservation of the quality of life in the neighborhood”.
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Overdensification, disfigurement of an urban block in the Latin Quarter once bathed by the Bièvre, destruction of a souvenir album shared by so many celebrities who came to be photographed in the studio, now located north of the capital... The new battle of local residents n It is still only a “hypothesis”, but they hope to succeed in permanently preserving the site from any construction project.
Gaspard Ulliel, Vanessa Paradis, Catherine Deneuve and many more...
“We have won the battle twice, we must protect this place for future generations”, argues Peter Thorn, spokesperson for the collective.
For future generations and a spangled memory that can even be admired, once past the decrepit porch and the first courtyard of number 36: here, near the imposing weight scale of the old tannery, the stars of the plateaus and podiums have dressed a wall with their signatures, over the years and photo shoots.
An exceptional autograph that the defenders of the place do not imagine seeing disappear.
Imagine, from Marion Cotillard to Nicole Garcia, from the ballerina Agnès Gillot to Gaspard Ulliel, the actor who died this winter at the age of 37 during a collision on skis, from the director Bruno Podalydès to the model Inès de la Fressange, Vanessa Paradis, Julie Delpy etc.
They are thus dozens to have left their paw on an old wall of this oasis traversed by Virginia creeper, which saw the Rolling Stones, Catherine Deneuve or Claudia Schiffer settle, in the objective of Rouchon.
Comedians, models, actors... many of them have signed and transformed this wall into a real piece of heritage, which the collective would also like to preserve.
It is also for this aspect of the heritage that the collective Fer à Moulin hopes to obtain, if not the registration of the building as a Historic Monument, at least its protection by the City of Paris.
“We are exploring several avenues,” they admit.
As for the future of the place, currently rented for exhibitions and cultural events, “it could shelter a synergy between the cinema La Clef, always threatened, and the youth center Censier, suggest the residents.
We have to find a destiny for it, why not a museum dedicated to the industrial past of the district, a house of culture... The owner could for example give up building and offer a long lease.
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