Situated in a distinctly non-builtup area outside the city of Strasbourg. Poised between the suburbs and city centre. A place for music which the most sophisticated connoisseurs describe as uncultured. A facility for accommodating an audience of 10,000-12,000. A shrine to hip-hop and events belonging to the culture of people living outside historical city centres. To be more precise, it was a question of creating a place for consecrating new suburban cultures and new multi-ethnic languages. The Strasbourg Zenith is the beating heart of the languages and dialects of outsiders. But it also belongs to those people who are part of the multitudes attending the ritual performances of pop concerts and who follow the schedule of events, which see leading bands and the world of show business shift from one side of Europe to the other. The Zenith is also a semicircular space in which the closeness of people to each other transforms the events-crazy spectators into one single hub.
The Strasbourg Zenith, the biggest in France (Zenith is the name given to all these music facilities sharing the same stylistic features and hence awarded the "Zenith Label").
1. Landscape. As you drive along the motorway turnoff leading into the centre of Strasbourg the landscape you see is totally unrecognizable and lacking in any striking features. Horizontality dominates everywhere. Traces of vegetation probably call to mind small woodlands which have been wiped out down the years by farming and rather unlikely constructions. This is what happens in the outskirts of the city of Strasbourg. A bourgeois city poised between Germany and France. My grandmother's home city, who was both German and Alsatian by birth. As are all the inhabitants of the region, which is just a 5-minute drive from the border. Hardly surprisingly Strasbourg is considered a European city. Home of the European Parliament, with Luxembourg and the Netherlands just a few hundred kilometres away, as well as Switzerland. A very self-sufficient area, which, until just a few months ago, was a long way from Paris but which now, thanks to the TGV, can be reached in three hours. It has become a city connecting together the German and French high-speed railway networks. The definitive passageway towards Eastern Europe. Strangely enough, it will in fact be Strasbourg with its high-speed lines which will exclude Italy from the major routes of high-speed European trains.
