They do things differently, over there. Seven years ago, the city of Paris took a look at the Salle Pleyel, an 80-year-old hall in the heart of the bourgeois eighth arondissement, and decided it was no longer fit for social purpose. Despite a 2002 restoration that retuned the acoustics and renovated the piano-shaped interior, the hall, it was decided, was in the wrong location to reach a young, multicultural population.

By two strokes of a pen, the mayor and the minister of culture resolved to build a new hall, the Philharmonie de Paris, a 40-minute traffic jam away-in the Parc de la Villette, a former abattoir located beside the peripheral motorway, near the end of the pink Metro line. The site already housed a science museum and the Boulez-inspired Cité de la Musique. A new concert hall would give it broader cultural credence.

An international competition was held to create an orchestra hall with a social conscience, delivering world-class performance to a shifting demographic. Ms Hadid made the shortlist, as usual; the winner was a French architect, Jean Nouvel, who had created the state-of-the-art floating concert hall in Lucerne, as well as the spaceship Louvre extension in Abu Dhabi. I was curious to see how it might turn out.

When I was taken on a hard-hat tour by Bruno Hamard, general director of the Orchestre de Paris, my heart sank with each clump of industrial boots on concrete foundations. M. Nouvel is a man of vision. His concept takes the archaic concert hall out of its enclosed, forbidding, elitist past and integrates it with the bustle of modern life.

The Parc and its play spaces run beneath the building, and above it, enfolding the severity of art in a ring of recreation. The roof, a gentle slope, can be ascended as a public walkway, delivering spectacular views over the city and a skateboard ride for the kids. Homeward drivers on the motorway see concert announcements flashed up on the exterior walls, like lane closures.