Switzerland – The Palais des Nations: A nostalgic brick and …
(MENAFN-Swissinfo)
Photographer Mark Henley reflects on the 836 million Swiss francs ($908 million) renovation of the United Nations Office at Geneva (UNOG). Henley has been working in the historic Palais des Nations, which is at the heart of the massive project, for several years. He was shortlisted for a Sony World Photo PrizeExternal link.
This content was published on February 22, 2022 – 9:00 am February 22, 2022 – 9:00 am Text and Photos, Mark Henley, Photo Editor, Helen James
The Palais was in urgent need of modernization in many respects. The heat in my small top-floor office was sometimes unbearable in the summer, and it is my fault that I emphasized the rusted windows of the building when taking the picture. I was also delighted by the inconsistencies of offices in spaces that were clearly not designed as offices, and all the other perils of repurposing in the last 85 years since the main building was completed – and for an entirely different organization, the long-dead League of Nations.
Drink the water from the taps at your own peril, and let’s not get into the fire hazards of old wiring (1,700km of it in need of replacement) and how it falls far off the scale in terms of modern energy efficiency or disabled access. Even the more modern buildings were unlucky enough to be built when asbestos was in fashion.
I must confess that like many old buildings it had enormous charm with its random uses and adapted functions. There are the press rooms, for example – one with glass-roofed booths, each with a light at the top – which appears to have been the subject of old struggles for ownership. To me, they resembled monastic cells with associated reliquaries—the filing cabinets that still contain religiously guarded newspaper clippings from the last century. Now everyone’s gone, cabins and all.
I think I’ll miss the huge pair of Belgian tapestries depicting half-naked women from around the world on the way to the UN’s main press conference room: an artistic monument to changing mores that’s always worth checking out just before a press conference while the sniffer dogs roamed around our gear and looked for explosives.
This room was the forum for many beautifully choreographed set pieces between security and stars, VVIPs and my international and other press brethren. There was one vacant seat up front, desk vacant, a square of scuffed carpet—our empire—the pit for photographers under the line of fire of the television cameras that lined the back and sides of the room on big occasions. Between these rooms sat the correspondents from Mexico to Senegal via China, India, Japan and across Europe, representing obscure magazines and big agencies.
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We know that once the renovations are complete, this space will not be where the press conferences will be held – the planners have decided otherwise – but we have no idea where that will be. A rumor said it would be in the former underground cinema.
Former cinema? Apparently it was hidden under a marble lobby for years, the access stairs were blocked by a photo booth, and chairs of different colors and eras are now stored there.
All of that will go, along with the canisters of film still stored in a back room. There’s something sad about all of this. We also know that the UN post office isn’t coming back – the one run by Swiss Post but only selling UN stamps sent in the one box (which of course didn’t accept Swiss stamps). I already miss that.
There is no doubt about the need for renovation, but of course there are questions about how it will be done and in which direction it will go in the future. I’ll admit that this is all a bit above my pay grade. What I do know is that I’ve kept my small office almost a year longer than originally planned, although I didn’t get there without a lot of confusion and climbing over barriers over the past few days. There was a day when even with a lost UN security guard it took 20 minutes to figure out a way to get there.
It’s perhaps a metaphor for the planned transition that all of the building’s employees will face, with everything going toward hot-desking and open plan offices to accommodate an additional 700 employees from other buildings in the city. The staff union, which was once my next-door neighbor in one of those happy coincidences of old arrangements, was far from happy about it. But I’m sure in time human nature will take over.
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One thing for sure, as indicated by a recent UN review, is that we anticipate potential cost overruns of CHF 35 million and a delayed completion date. And we’re only about halfway through, which I think makes it kind of human in the end.
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