A rival for Eiffel

  London and Moscow may be vying to be home to Europe's tallest skyscrapers, but greater Paris has just come up with what may be the most original -- or bizarre, depending on your taste.

The new tower, to be built at La Défense, the business district on the western edge of  Paris, will measure 300 metres (990 feet), the first French building to come close to the height of the Eiffel Tower, with its 324 metres. Its distinction is a design that looks like a cross between an exotic plant and an elegant ship's funnel.

The organic, plant-like look was the goal of Thom Mayne, the radical Californian architect whose Morphosis agency won the competition to build a monumental tower for the Unibail property group. The prime specification was that it must be a a model for sustainable development.

The double-skinned, asymetric building is designed with soft curves on the sunny southern side and geometrical rigour on the windy north. Its most distinctive feature is a wind farm on top which will generate power to cool its 130,000 square metres of office.

The retro science-fiction look to the summit is, according to the architect, un hommage to Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the Hungarian artist-photographer to was a leader of the Bauhaus design movement of the 1930s.

Le Phare (the lighthouse), as the tower is to be called, will by 2012 dominate the forest of banal corporate property that clusters around La Défense, a high-rise island outside low-rise Paris. Another new tower, a Gothic skyscraper a few metres lower than Le Phare, is also planned, for the Generali insurance group [below].

Mayne's Phare tower will stir the criticism that comes with all pioneering architecture. Parisians hated Gustave Eiffel's edifice when it went up in 1889. Alexandre Dumas fils and Guy de Maupassant called it a "gigantic black factory chimney". Eiffel's monument long ago won Parisian hearts but the city has remained allergic to towers thanks to a string of architectural disasters in the 1960s and 70s. The worst by far was the 1972 Montparnasse tower, a black monstrosity that looms 210 metres high over a sea of concrete on the Left Bank.

The visual impact on Paris of le Phare will be limited because La Défense is five miles from the city. But the burst of creative building there is stirring envy and annoyance at the city hall of Mayor Bertrand Delanoe. After he took office in 2001, the Socialist mayor of Paris tried to ease the city's strict height rules to allow new architecture that could compete with London, Bilbao and other cities. He was turned down by his own council and by city residents who are adamant that nothing should mar the classical skyline.

[Tour Montparnasse]

I apologise to those who take me to task for bringing Nicolas Sarkozy into so many posts, but here we go again. The Interior Minister and centre-right presidential candidate is boss of La Défense's development agency, known as EPAD. The new towers are part of their plans for a big expansion of office space. The Delanoe team and the Ile de France (Paris region) council  -- headed by Socialists -- are annoyed because the Défense expansion runs counter to the campaign to rebalance Paris by developing the neglected eastern outskirts.

Their complaints are greeted with a shrug from Sarkozy and his friends. Companies with the cash for big monuments all want to stay in the west. Location, location, location,  they say. 

Comments

[Sarah Hague]

Yes, it would be a shame if workers coming out of work were systematically mugged on their way home.
If the police there fear to tread, why should businesses thrown down the gauntlet? Even with the carrot of generous tax incentives.

[maggie]

They are obviously jealous of London's beautiful Guerkin !

[rocket]

Having worked in French advertising agencies, I know more or less where they are coming from and which image the french love to project to the outside world.

La Phare looks like a giant curved Penis to me which would be keeping with the cultural integrity of France, much as the logo for the RATP which looks like a woman, head turned upward in a submissive position.

Maybe if a woman is elected as President of France we will see some new architectural designs which would look like the good ole "Grandes Ecoles" boys on their knees.

[christopher muir]

I guess the question will be answered when office workers begin their duties inside this odd-looking edifice. Will it have been designed for visual effect or for the comfort of human beings? The futuristic Sydney Opera House theatres suffered because of behind the scenes bickering. There are also too many stairs in the spectacular place. Le Phare is showing the way with its wind farm, hopefully setting a guideline in that regard for power-hungry office towers.

I remember reading soon after 9/11 that tall buildings would be out of vogue for many years to come. Looks like that forecast flopped.

[Robert Marchenoir]

I have just discovered the Phare's design here and I find it of stunning beauty. The Generali tower, by contrast, is a horrible piece of 70's nouveau riche visual aggression.

Fortunately, all these buildings are planned outside Paris proper, and that is where they should be.

Delanoë and various star architects are moaning about the so-called conservatism of Parisians who would not agree to skyscrapers being built within the city.

Both are victims of their miserable and perverted egos.

The mayor, because no major political leader in France would imagine to quit without leaving a big concrete turd within his constituency, so citizens could curse at him even after his death.

The architects, because attaching your name to a big ugly dick in the middle of Paris is naturally a way to attract world fame.

Both conveniently ignore the fact that Paris is a very small city compared with all world capitals of comparable status, that it is choke full of architectural treasures from the past, and that it is impossible to plant a skyscraper anywhere within the périphérique without utterly ruining the place.

As the tour Montparnasse and the Front de Seine have amply demonstrated.

I hope that someday, someone has the guts to demolish these monstrosities, just as they blast cheap high-rise buildings with dynamite in the banlieues .

[maggie]

My ,My, Robert & Rocket , do say what you think & don't hold back.
You have summed up my reaction to the photo of the hideous La Phare, perfectly.
Except I lacked the courage to write it here.
Thanks a lot for making me laugh.
A lot. !!!
And, Charles , oh so polite in your description of it, surely you smiled whilst writing it. ?

[Robert Marchenoir]

Maggie, I like le Phare very much. Really. Both beauty and ugliness are to be found in contemporary architecture. Anything referring to Bauhaus cannot be all bad, anyway.

[Robert Marchenoir]

This fresh article from the Herald Tribune sums it up nicely:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/03/news/towers.php?page=1

[reliapundit]

looks like a woman in full burqa to me.

apt.

soon notre dame will be a mosque.

[Mathieu Q.]

To Sarah:

It may not be Paris East, but a lot of companies are relocating from la Défense to Saint-Denis, in the North of Paris, one of the suburbs with the worst reputation, thanks to tax incentives and of the proximity to Charles de Gaulle. So, when there is a political will, things do change...

[Swift]

The Tour Montparnasse is an architectual monstrosity, but from a distance it looks ok (just as Sacre Coeur is mille fois better from afar).
But it only looks ok by dint of its isolation and its being the only tall building in central Paris after the Tour Eiffel.
As such, it creates an interesting sky line when looking back over Paris from, say, Belleville or the Butte de Montmartre.
But this is irreperably undone as soon as you stand at its foot or walk around the ugly concrete structures at its base.
I'm told the view from the top is stunning though - but its always easier on the eye looking out from a grim hideous mess than the reverse.
As for La Phare, I don't think it is that bad at all, and it's not as if it will be in central Paris anyway. If anything, it will lighten up (literally and figuratively) the skyline of La Defense.

[Patrick]

If only Central London could come up with ideas like these... and beat Paris at its own game. Canary Wharf is so boring.