The Headquarters of the French Communist Party known as le siège du Parti communiste français is already speaking about being under siege but by what? As we dived underground and took refuge in its spaces below ground we began to sense how fight and flight is etched into the fabric of its being. We were uncertain whether the building had taken fright and was hiding underground or whether it had dug into this corner of the 19th arrondissement as the French resistance had done eighty-two years ago. History and trauma repeating itself. That is, until the shapeshifting began. The building underwent many makeovers and finally shed its name for another, recalling its Brazilian star architect Niemeyer. Within Espace Niemeyer a shinier rejuvenated version of le Siège emerged, available for hire by the elite of the fashion and film world. It was only being a beautiful and dutiful offspring. It had to care for an ailing elderly parent, who could no longer support itself. No one could talk openly about this new direction, least of all the comrades. It was startling to see the ease with which this newer shiner self, staged the buildings curvaceous forms and celestial dome as objects of glamour and consumption. Its flair and exuberance and sense of the spectacular extinguishing the memory of le Siège and winning it the cult of personality. It’s never easy coming face to face with your double, particularly when it seems like a premonition of death. 

It is uncanny though, how alike le Siège and Espace Niemeyer are in many ways. Mercurial and transgressive in nature they blend the masculine clean lines of modernism with the sinuous curves of the hills of Rio. The building is as fluid and queer in its form as it is in its gender which earned it the reputation of being wayward and otherly in Haussmann’s Paris. As a Brazilian outpost in Paris and a migrant, the building couldn’t escape the way it looked, its appearance instilled both fear, excitement and exotification. Espace Niemeyer has learnt that its acceptance is in its appeal. But le Siège - not quite dead - is contemplating a different kind of future. One where political, economical and social realities are not just bound to the human but extend to and connect with all life forms, in a polyphonic and watery conjunction.