Welcome to season 3! A block from the studio sits the 25Hours Hotel Terminus Nord, a new property that celebrates the real people who shape the day to day life of the wider Gare du Nord neighborhood. It’s also the latest project for today’s guest — Alex Toledano, co-founder of the art consultancy Visto Images.

Alex spent the bulk of his graduate and doctoral work studying urban history in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries but went to apply much of that firsthand knowledge of a city’s urban fabric into establishing art collections for hotels, residences, offices and public spaces that tell a distinct narrative. Today, he joins me to talk about the changing fabric of the 10th arrondissement, the area that he has spent years studying, and more specifically the Gare du Nord. We talk about what’s special about the art and concept for this new hotel and why so much of Paris changes without every really changing at all.

Mentioned in this episode:

Visto Images: http://www.vistoimages.com

Art in Hotels: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/travel/beaumont-hotel-london.html

25Hours Hotel Terminus Nord: https://www.25hours-hotels.com/hotels/paris/terminus-nord

Alex’s NYT Magazine story: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/16/magazine/the-uncommon-resilience-of-parisian-street-life.html