La Villette

This guide to La Villette in Paris begins on March 15, 1974, the day the last bull was slaughtered at what had been the city's industrial killing ground since 1867. It follows the decade the site sat abandoned, and the extraordinary 1982 competition that drew 471 architects and ended with Bernard Tschumi beating out Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, and Jean Nouvel. Listen for what his red steel follies, scattered across the park, are actually designed to do.