Printemps

I'm in Poitiers, south west France, for a conference. That means stimulating debate, diverting conversation, and the opportunity to meet old friends and make new ones. It's a fascinating city, with wonderful buildings dating back 900 years, and constructions of one sort and another going back to Roman times.

And yet, in among all this architectural richness, this building caught my eye. A faded concrete box from the 1960s (regular viewers of my Blips might discern a pattern emerging here). I love the cracks in the mosaic wall that have crudely filled in with mortar; I love the trademark typeface - at once so French and so typical of a lost period of postwar optimism - the building looks like an old set from a Jacques Tati movie; and most of all I love the name - Printemps...spring - what could be more forward looking?

And yet the place is so jaded, so sad, the irony is unavoidable. Printemps fronts on to the main square of the city, which was principally built in the 19th century, and with which it is quite out of keeping. The square is being upgraded, as can be seen from the photo, to create a pedestrian piazza. How long will this store, this tired relic from a fast receding era, remain?