Mission Grand Axe

La Défense is a strategic reserve that has so far kept Paris intact, a privileged expansion zone that enables the city – even the country – to modernize itself constantly, to make the tactical adjustments necessary to compete with other world capitals. It is a theatre of progress. Its presence has saved Paris; each "eyesore" realized there has prevented an invasion of the centre. Now that the first sector is "finished", the question of its expansion becomes acute. The existing is, in Europe, an ambiguous condition. Because Europe is the Old World, the "continent of history", there is an unspoken assumption that all its substance – even the most mediocre – is historic, and therefore has a right to eternal life.