Grande Arche de La Défense, Paris — Looking Up

4 October 2017 · Paris

Shot from the base of the Grande Arche, the camera angled straight up, the hollow cube frames a slice of overcast Paris sky with the precision of a geometry proof. Johan Otto von Spreckelsen designed this as a monument to humanity — what the low angle delivers is something more austere: a portal that dwarfs everything inside it. The tensile canopy suspended in the void adds a layer of suspended weight to a structure that already reads as pure mass. Scale as argument, geometry as composition.