Morphosis To Design Paris' Tallest

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briv

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From the BBC:

Paris skyscraper to rival tower
Paris has chosen an American architect to build the French capital's tallest new building since the Eiffel Tower in the 19th Century.

The new curving skyscraper will be the centrepiece of a redevelopment project in the north-west of Paris.

Thom Mayne's Los Angeles-based company Morphosis beat off rivals as prestigious as the UK's Norman Foster and France's Jean Nouvel.

Building regulations have kept tall buildings out of Paris for 30 years.

One notable exception is the Tour Montparnasse which rises 180 metres (590 ft) in the south-west of the capital.

An international jury announced the winner, following a contest organised by French property group Unibail as part of a project to revamp La Defense business district.

The Paris city government opposes plans for a new skyscraper in the district, but the project is backed by French public body EPAD, which is in charge of the district's wider renovation, AFP news agency reports.

Ecobuilding

At 300 metres (990 ft), the Lighthouse will come a close second to the Eiffel Tower, which rises to 324 metres.

It is due to be completed in 2012 and will cost an estimated 800m euros ($1.05bn) to build.

Its twin structure will combine a rectangular base with a soaring, organic-shaped tower, capped by a field of wind turbines.

Unibail described the project as an "architectural event... that pays tribute to the major buildings in La Defense - the CNIT and the Great Arch".

Last year, Thom Mayne was awarded the Pritzker prize, the world's top architecture award.

"It's about an icon, and one of the major buildings in Paris," he said of the winning project.

He added the building would be "a prototype for a green building" with a wind farm generating its own heating and a "double skin" of steel and glass to a self-cooling mechanism for the hotter months.

His works include Los Angeles' new mass transit hub, the Taipei Design Centre and Seoul's Sun Tower.
 
article said:
Building regulations have kept tall buildings out of Paris for 30 years.

One notable exception is the Tour Montparnasse which rises 180 metres (590 ft) in the south-west of the capital.
Click to expand...

They fail to mention that this proposed building is actually outside the Ville de Paris (city limits). It's actually in Courbevois, so they can build as tall as they want. Tour Montparnasse is the only skyscraper within Paris.
 
^And Tour Montparnasse is the reason why there will never be another sky scraper built in Paris proper.
 
OMG that tower is horrible looking. What the hell is that, a sea cucumber?
 
The stuff coming from the top is weird.... I wonder what it is?
 
Sincerely hope not, simply for the satisfaction of crushing Thom Mayne's ego. When I met him in LA and criticized his work for lacking scale, the crank quickly lost his temper. Probably the only sober architect I've ever met who was quite ready to go to fisticuffs over criticism. Any architects, no matter how famous, who can take criticism are abject failures, they'll never accept and learn from mistakes.

One feels for his students and employees.
 
You can plainly see the anger in his buildings.

Unpleasant buildings from an unpleasant man.
 
Wright had a severe anger management problem and a massive ego complex, yet his buildings and dialogue lacked the outright violent hostility which Mayne exhibits without the slightest hint of discretion.

I really don't expect Thom to have a lengthy career given how hard he is to work with. Clients, staff, consultants, and especially associate architects eventually feel it isn't worth the gymnastics.
 
What is that low-lying area extending behind the arch? A cemetary?
 
czsz said:
What is that low-lying area extending behind the arch? A cemetary?
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Oui. In the late 1980's,when the Grande Arche was just completed, I stood right at it's rear and looked out over that cemetery. At that time, it seemed that the city ended in a line right there. There were no more tall buildings beyond that line, just low-lying suburb. I imagine construction has continued outward from there by now.
 
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