Paris Rive Gauche: A new university on the
left bank
Annik BIANCHINI, France
A large university complex devoted to science, languages and
literature is being built along the Seine at Paris Rive Gauche. This new Sorbonne, located
in the east of the French capital, will benefit from the complementarity of the French
National library, the medical centers and the firms in the area. Paris Rive Gauche will
thus become one of the major Paris areas for culture, research and knowledge.
It is an ambitious and revolutionary project. The
implementation of the "university of the 3-rd millennium" will result in the
creation, in 2003, of a new Latin Quarter at Paris Rive Gauche, located in the 13 th
district of Paris. It will be as horizontal as the business district of La Defense, east
of Paris, reaches up to the sky and will now be in serious competition with the west of
Paris. It will be divided up into three zones, Austerlitz, Tolbiac and Massena, and
already attracts French and foreign investors as well as firms which feel cramped in the
center of Paris.
The multidisciplinary university of Paris VII-Denis Diderot
is thus moving out of the district of Jussieu to settle along the Seine, in the Massena
district which makes up the eastern part of Paris Rive Gauche. Paris VII is going to take
over the refurbished buildings of the former flour mills as well as new premises which are
to be built nearby. The INALCO, national institute of oeiental languages and
civilizations, commonly known as "Langues O" and important scientific and
cultural establishment for research and teching in 88 languages from Asia, Africa and
Oceania, will relocate to an area between, Rue du Chevaleret and Rue Cantragel.
A unique institution in France: The mission
of this institution which is unique in France has provided teaching of a high since 1795,
is to train "executives for the East". It fits in with the movement of
modernising the "grandes ecoles" in Paris. Nowadays, two thirds of INALCO's
students follow a second university syllabus, in addiotion to their studies of oriental
languages, which facilitates their insertion in the professional world. The first students
could arrive as early as 2002. Moreover, discussions are underway as to whether a schools
of architecture and a top business school, EHPE will also be included in the complex. The
first stage represents an area of 130,000m square. A second stage is also planned to
enable the whole of the university of Paris VII to come together and to reinforce the
teaching of languages and civilization, bringing the total area up to 200,000m square.
The cultural vocation of the Massena district is clearly
taking shape around the former refrigerated warehouses between the Francois Mitterand
French National library and the New Sorbonne. The Paris planning company SEMAPA-Societe'
d'Economie Mixte d' Amenagement de Paris- has put the architect Christian Portzamparc in
charge of the overall plan. His style of urban planning is characterised by open small
blocks of flats, each one designed by a different architect) interspersed with numerous
green areas and and narrow streets which encourage only locals to drive there.
Th land has been given by the city of Paris and is woth
around 1.5 billion francs. The state and the Paris Ile-de-France region will provide the
same amount of funding for building university premises and libraries. Paris city hall and
the state have also decided to contribute to the creation of accommodation for 6oo
students and sports facilities.
A place of synergy based on eclecticism: "The
purpose", Michel Delamare, the president of the university of Paris VII and the
designer, together with Francois Montarras, of the new campus, explains, "is to form
a new university by defining the components of a world in which teaching is carried out
quite differently from ten years ago". Since 1996, discussions have been under way
between SEMPA and university administrators at Paris VII to decide upon the best way to
set up the university. They completely agreed on the idea of building a "university
in the town", in the heart of a district containing firms, housing, public services,
leisure facilities and restaurants, businesses, shops and offices.
He creation of this university complex will have
repercussions on the whole area and not only economic ones due to the arrival of nearly
30,000 students. It will increase the importance and weight of research in the Paris Rive
Gauche area where there is already the Pitte'-Salpetriere university hospital, the
National Health and Medical Research Institute, INSERM, and the Sanofi-Synthelabo
pharmaceuticals group. It reinforces the action taken by SEMPA to encourage innovating
SMEs to move to this area as well as firms in biotechnology and the new information and
communication technologies. The presence of contemporary art galleries in Rue Louise
Weiss, artists' studios and theatre-barges moored along the quayside make Paris Rive
Gauche a place of synergy, based on breaking down barriers and eclecticism. From this
point of view, the Masena district will be a cultural area on its own right as networks of
scientific creation and artistic creation exist together and students, researchers,
businessmen and artists live side by side.
Germany:From cross-breeding to genetic
transplantation
-Hermann Horstkotte, Germany
In June 2000, researchers from the US firm Celera Genomics
and the government sponsored human genome project in Berlin, London and Washington
announced the almost complete sequencing of the 3 billion components of the human genome.
This scientific breakthrough met with even greater echo three months later at the world
"Biotechnology 2000" congress in Berlin.
Biotechnology is an interdisciplinary science linking
biology, chemistry and physics with engineering. Biotechnology is needed, for example, to
cultivate micro-organisms and individual cells from plants in nutrients that is to enable
mass reproduction of identical plant material to color.
150 companies already belong to the "German Association
of Biotechnology Industries". Director Gerd Romanowski says: "' we are on the
way to the top. Turnover growth rose by 30% in 1999, and the number of employees was up by
40% to 8000. Of 36 medicines based on genetic technology, which were licensed in 1999, 15
came from the US, and six from Germany. This puts us in the second place, although we are
well behind the United States." At present, 300 clinical studies using the methods of
genetic engineering are underway in the field of cancer research alone, alone
Joachim-Friedrich Kapp from Schering, the Berlin based pharmaceuticals group.
The most vigorous debate around the world and in Germany in
particular is about agriculture biotechnology with its genetically modified products.
Since neither the consumers nor, so far, the scientists, are able to assess the
consequences, the level of concern is great. The public is afraid of a sort of horror
story in which the product destroys its creators. For example, genetically modified tomato
sauce was a big seller in Britain-until an imaginative journalist came up with a headline
about "Frankenstein foods"'. "When it come to green genetic engineering
that is the use of genetically modified plants in agriculture, I'm aware of problems of
public acceptance," says Romanowski, the Association's lobbyist. "That impacts
on government. The European Union has not issued any licenses for genetically modified
seed for two years".
Advances in consensus with society: Against
this background, communication between the expert and the ordinary citizen is becoming
more and more important for the biotechnology firms. There is currently a scheme of
support programs being run by the Donors' Association for the Promotion of Sciences and
Humanities in Germany, an organization with close links with Industry, with the aim of
substantially improving this dialogue. The focus is on " consensus conferences"
at which ordinary citizens can put questions to experts, so that they can subsequently
arrive at their own assessment of the situation, an assessment which might, for example,
also feed into debates on future legislation. Similar experience has been acquired over
the last twenty years in Denmark. The idea behind these initiatives involving non-experts
is the belief that in an educated society, "responsible citizens" will always
consider specialized issues from various points of view-not only commercial, but also
social and ethical.
However, it should be borne in mind that in countries with a
less homogeneous level of education than, for example, the developed industrial societies
of Europe, biotechnology will be forced to-or deliberately be able to- get along without a
consensus in society for its commercial operations. The information gap does not exactly
promote the development of cutting-edge technologies, but nor does it necessarily stand in
its way. On the other hand, well-educated citizens in Germany have already tried to block
open-air trials by occupying fields or violently destroying test corps. Such circumstances
affect corporate decisions on where to invest around the world.
From cross breeding to genetic transplantation:
What does genetic technology in plants actually involve? The young science aims to be more
efficient about achieving something that traditional plant cultivation has been attempting
for centuries via cross-breeding and selection: to enhance the resistance of crops and
pests or to make them more resilient and to boost yields. Nowadays, the aim is to achieve
this by inserting useful genes in to the genetic make-up of the plant. Global research is
focusing not least on Soya and maize, and Germany is also working on sugar beet.
Discoveries have to be made before they can be used. In other
words, biotechnology first has to clarify which plant genes direct which biological
functions. The clarification poses problems, since several genes direct many functions at
once.
That is basic research related to the decoding of the genome.
It is such a long way away from marketable product that private companies in this field
occasionally prefer to invest venture capital in joint projects with public-sector,
non-profit oriented research establishments than to do the work entirely at their own
expense. For example, BASF, the chemicals group, set up a joint venture called
"Metanomics"' with the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology in
Berlin. Accordingly, scientific findings by the Institute can be used by BASF. Similar
arrangements apply to "'Sun Gene"'', which BASF has set up with the Institute
for Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research, IPK, in Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany. BASF
intends to invest a total of one hundred million marks in the start-up companies within
the space of five years. A further DM 1.5 billion is going into "BASF Plant Science
GmbH, a subsidiary jointly owned by BASF and Svalof Weibuli, the Swedish seed firm. CEO
Hans Kast expects it will take at least ten years before a new product can be marketed.
(Text courtesy: Embassy of Germany in Kathmandu). |
