La Pyramide Inversée
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La Pyramide Inversée (The Inverted Pyramid) is a skylight constructed in an underground shopping mall in front of the Louvre Museum in France. It may be thought of as a smaller sibling of the more famous Louvre Pyramid proper, yet turned "upside down": its upturned base is easily overlooked from outside.
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[edit] Design
The pyramid marks the intersection of two main walkways and orients visitors towards the museum entrance. Tensioned against a 30-ton, 13.3-meter square steel caisson frame, the inverted pyramidal shape in laminated glass points downward towards the floor. The tip of the pyramid is suspended 1.4 meters (a little more than 4.5 feet) above floor level. Individual glass panes in the pyramid, 30 mm thick, are connected by stainless steel crosses 381 mm in length. After dark, the structure is illuminated by a frieze of spotlights.
Directly below the tip of the downwards-pointing glass pyramid, a small stone pyramid (about one meter/three feet high) is stationed on the floor, as if mirroring the larger structure above: The tips of the two pyramids almost touch.
La Pyramide Inversée was designed by architects I.M. Pei, Cobb Freed and Partners, and installed as part of the Phase II government renovation of the Louvre Museum. It was completed in 1993. In 1995, it was a finalist in the Benedictus Awards, described by the jury as "a remarkable anti-structure … a symbolic use of technology … a piece of sculpture. It was meant as an object but it is an object to transmit light."
[edit] La Pyramide Inversée in The Da Vinci Code
The Inverted Pyramid figures prominently on the concluding pages of Dan Brown's international bestseller The Da Vinci Code. The author, or rather the protagonist of his novel, reads esoteric symbolism into the two pyramids: The Inverted Pyramid is perceived as a Chalice, a feminine symbol, whereas the stone pyramid below is interpreted as a Blade, a masculine symbol: the whole structure could thus express the union of the genders. Moreover, Brown's protagonist concludes that the tiny stone pyramid is actually only the apex of a larger pyramid (possibly the same size as the inverted pyramid above), embedded in the floor as a secret chamber. This chamber is said to enclose the body of Mary Magdalene.
In reality, the stone pyramid sits on top of the floor and does not extend below it; indeed it is so designed that it can be removed during maintenance work.
[edit] Analysis
Whatever one thinks of Brown's fictionalized treatment of La Pyramide Inversée, the author can claim credit for having brought a remarkable work of architectural art to the attention of the general public. On pp. 453–54 of The Da Vinci Code, Brown lyrically describes the Inverted Pyramid "plunging into the earth like a crystal chasm...aglow with amber light" (the view from outside after dark), indeed a "breathtaking V-shaped contour of glass" (the view from below).
It should be noted, however, that the description provided in the novel is not in all respects accurate (irrespective of the claim that the stone pyramid "protrudes up through the floor" rather than simply sitting on top of the floor). On one point, Brown's description is indeed self-contradictory. He rightly describes the stone pyramid as being three feet tall and "almost touching" La Pyramide Inversée above, yet he also says that the tip of the pyramid is suspended "six feet above the floor": Given these descriptions, they could hardly be described as "almost touching" one another. In fact, the tip of La Pyramide Inversée is closer to the floor than six feet (rather, as noted above, 4.5 feet), so that it does indeed hover right above the tip of the three-foot stone pyramid below.
[edit] Other esoteric interpretations
Brown was not the first writer to offer esoteric interpretations of the Inverted Pyramid. In Raphäel Aurillac's work Le guide du Paris maçonnique the author declares that the Louvre used to be a Masonic temple. To Aurillac, the various glass pyramids constructed in recent decades include Masonic symbolism. Aurillac sees the downward-pointing pyramid as expressing the Rosicrucian motto "Visit the interior of the earth and…you will find the secret stone" (VITRIOL). Another writer on Masonic architecture, Dominique Stezepfandt, sees the two pyramids as suggesting "the compass and square that together form the Seal of Solomon" (quoted in Code Da Vinci: L'enquête by Marie-France Etchegoin and Frédéric Lenoir).
According to I. M. Pei's biographer Carter Wiseman, he is interested almost solely in abstract geometrical forms, which if true would mean that the Inverted Pyramid has no other meaning or purpose than to function as a light-well in the underground shopping area where it is suspended.
