Draft:Gallery Oslo (Les Olympiades Paris 13e)

• Comment: Notable?, needs many references, thank you Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:23, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

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Olympiades (Gallerie Oslo location)

Gallery Oslo (also referred to as Oslo Shopping Center or Centre Commercial Oslo) is a shopping mall located in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, the capital of France. It is located at 44 Avenue d’Ivry, 75013 Paris, where it is accessible by three entrances. Opened in 1974, Gallery Oslo is part of and is found in a larger construction project – the Olympiades Complex. The shopping center, being located in the center of Paris’s Chinatown, is an integral part of the neighborhood. Its numerous shops, beauty services, and restaurants are frequented by local residents and tourists alike. These business include a pharmacy; an Asian grocery store; restaurants specializing in Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, Laotian, and Cambodian cuisine; Asian bakeries; a hair and nail salon; a wholesale beauty store; an eyewear store; traditional Chinese clothing stores; jewelry stores; 2 K-pop and J-pop stores; a butcher; Japanese manga stores; a karaoke bar; and a bank.

History

Les Olympiades in Paris was constructed between 1969 and 1974, featuring eight towers, each standing 104 meters tall and a mall located at the southern end of the complex named the Gallery Oslo (Galerie Oslo). Each tower after cities that have hosted the Olympic Games—Antwerp, Athens, Cortina d'Ampezzo, Helsinki, London, Mexico City, Sapporo, and Tokyo—was initially intended to attract young professionals. However, starting in 1975, the Galerie Oslo began to draw Vietnamese and Chinese residents, contributing to the development of the main Chinatown in Paris. Les Olympiades

Amid political unrest in Indochina during the 1970s, including the Khmer Rouge genocides and the Vietnam War, France welcomed approximately 145,000 refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos between 1975 and 1987, many of whom were of Chinese origin.

By 1990, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians had congregated together due to language barriers and limitations in qualifications recognized in France, and made up three-quarters of the Asian population in the 13th arrondissement.

This new Asian community brought with it diverse food and retail businesses, converting many of the businesses within the Oslo Galerie to restaurants featuring diverse asian cuisine and shops featuring goods imported from

Architecture

The 13th Arrondissement of Paris is not only home to extensive cultural history but also a wealth of postwar  architectural development. Specifically Olympiades, which is the neighborhood that houses Galerie Oslo, was one of the starting points for the development of more brutalist, modern architecture following the war in the 60s period. If one looks closely, Paris is home to some incredible architectural marvels that deviate from its usual Haussmannian style. This is thanks to Michel Holley, and Jean Prouvé the founding fathers of the French modern movement.

Extensive work was done in areas of Paris that needed more development from 1957 and later in 1959 would continue with the development of the Paris Master Urban Plan. This would be implemented in 1961, and would bring about the development of a lot of larger buildings like the ones seen in Olympiades following the more brutalist style. This was in coordination with urban renovation workshops taking place at the time and with this Michael Holly helped to develop the 13th district.

Paris’s 13 displays a wide range of brutalist texture which includes the Tolbiac University, the Tour de Nouveau Monde, Caserne Massena, and the Olympiades towers.

Other architecture from the 1970s and 60s really reflect this new modernist as well as more brutalist style. Other examples of this include the Etoiles d’Ivry, which were built in 1968.

The layout of Gallery Oslo and Olympiades is rigorously . The buildings themselves are incredibly even proportioned as well as symmetrical with  consistent elements such as material as well as properties like the size of the windows and rooms. Note in the diagrams below the layout within the buildings themselves.

Demographic

Considered one of the largest in Europe, Paris’s Chinatown serves as a central hub for the local Asian community. The enclave’s demographic was formed by centuries of immigration, with significant waves originating from Southeast Asia in the mid-20th century.

While it is difficult to extract a concrete estimate, the contemporary demographic composition of Paris’s Chinatown is primarily made of Chinese descendants. Despite the concentration of Chinese residents, the Parisian neighborhood is home to a diverse range of Asian ancestry. The area, which includes Avenue de Choisy, Avenue d’Ivry, and Place d’Italie hosts an abundance of Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian residents fostering a multicultural community and environment.

In recent years, waves of immigration from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China have cemented the neighborhood’s identity as a center for wide-ranging Asian culture, commerce, and acceptance within Paris. The multicultural community is a direct reflection of the Chinese diaspora with residents contributing a broad-range of different regional, cultural, commercial, and linguistic practices to the neighborhood's diversity.