Orsay-Paris: a vital undertaking illuminating the future tasks incumbent upon the City. This geographic locality, this extraordinary element of the Parisian countryside: the Seine, the Tuileries, the Hill of Montmartre, the Hill of l'Étoile, the Hill of the Pantheon, the Invalides, Notre-Dame, a feast for the mind and for the eyes. The history (Lutèce-Paris: Notre-Dame, the Pont-Neuf, the Pont-Royal; Louis XIV: the Louvre and the Tuileries; Louis XV: The Place de la Concorde; Napoleon: L'Étoile, the unexpected poem of Sacré-Coeur, the splendor of the Invalides, the spirit of the Eiffel Tower, the Pantheon)- all this can become an immense spectacle offered to Parisians and to visitors.
This project involves, in effect, a Center of Culture, Conventions, Exhibitions, Music, Shows, Conferences, furnished with all modern media of circulation, acoustic devices and facilities of relaxation impeccably tied in with the totality of Paris by water, subway, streets and (perhaps) linked by railway to Orly Airport which has become the gateway to Paris, a port not of the sea, but a port of the air.
And all this without a blur, without an hiatus; this born by the times, by the spirit across the centuries. Modern building technology permits the creation of a prodigious instrument of emotion.
Such is the chance offered to Paris if Paris has the taste for "continuing" and will not sacrifice to stupidity its immense historic countryside. Only if the promoters of this project love Paris fervently can this goal-attainable though lofty be reached.
The present study has demanded months of work. It was conducted with a spirit of absolute loyalty, of totally constructive rigor, organic and with the desire to bring about a decisive manifestation of architecture at a time when Paris is in danger of being milked by profiteers or by persons altogether lacking in spirit.
Extract from Le Corbusier, Oeuvre complète, volume 7, 1957-1965