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A World of Things in Emergence and Growth: René Binet’s Porte Monumentale at the 1900 Paris Exposition

This book chapter examines the temporary structure of the Porte Monumentale built for the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle (World’s Fair) by architect René Binet, in terms of its relationship to the architect’s knowledge of Ernst Haeckel’s popular scientific work on evolution and deep-sea life, and a wider contemporary culture of transformism in the arts in France. It is included in a book on Symbolism in France and Britain, edited by Claire O’Mahony, which includes essays on the fin-de-siècle mystical interpretation of the small object.

The chapter argues for the extension of the idea of the talismanic object into a public and political role, as Binet’s extraordinary gateway, based on Haeckel’s illustrations of microscopic sea-creatures, provided an iconic image of the Exposition, an event intended to show the important place of France at the centre of the world and in the advance of humanity through industry and commerce.

This research, undertaken in Paris, London and Jena (the latter at the Archive of Ernst Haeckel, where some of Binet’s correspondance is kept), was part-funded through a British Academy Small Research Grant. It also resulted in a peer-reviewed article, ‘Architecture from the Cell-Soul: René Binet and Ernst Haeckel’ in the Journal of Architecture. Proctor also brought the research to a wider non-academic audience by collaborating with Professor Olaf Breidbach of the University of Jena in a book, 'René Binet: From Nature to Form', published by Prestel in 2007, and consisting of essays by the authors with a reprint of plates from Binet's Art Nouveau book, Esquisses Decoratives. This research on Binet was also presented at a Design History Society conference in Delft, entitled 'Design and Evolution', in 2006. The current essay 'A World of Things' thus forms part of a body of research that is one of Proctor's two current strands of activity.