The 50-storey building has already been dubbed the "Delanoë tower" after Paris' Socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoë, who has battled to bring towers to the low-rise city.

Conceived by the Swiss agency Herzog & de Meuron - who designed the Tate Modern and the "Bird's Nest" stadium for the Beijing Olympics - the edifice is described as "a sort of Kheops' pyramid squashed and morphed by computer tools, with a very narrow-width base and very stretched out lengthwise."

The privately-financed building is expected to contain offices looking outward and a luxury hotel looking towards the city centre. There are also plans for luxury boutiques, a panoramic restaurant, a swimming pool, hanging gardens and a Babel-like "museum of languages of the world".

Scheduled for completion by 2012, it will overlook Paris from its southwestern extremity at the porte de Versailles, already home to a vast exhibition centre. It is the first of six gratte-ciels (high-rise) projects to be launched by Mr Delanoë. These are all in "exceptional" designated zones on the outer limits of the city, with some to include subsidised housing to ease the capital's housing crisis.

In July, the mayor won backing from Paris' city council to make exceptions to a 30-year-old ban on high-rise buildings, currently limited to 37 metres.

The height restriction was introduced in 1977 after Parisians feared a repeat of the ugly 210-metre Montparnasse tower south of the River Seine.

The running joke in France, where Belgians are often mocked, is: "What do you call a Belgian who blows up the Tour Montparnasse? A national hero."

Parisians also shudder to remember feted architect Le Corbusier's notorious Plan Voisin for Paris in 1925, which would have seen much of the right bank of the Seine flattened and replaced with a series of high-rise tower blocks.

While many architects have expressed enthusiasm for the relaxing of building restrictions, two thirds of Parisians oppose taller buildings in the capital, arguing that it will destroy the 19th century skyline, which largely remains intact.

The French Green Party voted against skyscrapers on grounds of energy efficiency.

"Tower blocks are the town planning equivalent of the SUV: flashy machines that devour energy," one Green Party councillor said in July.

But the mayor insists they will be environmentally friendly.

His deputy, Anne Hidalgo, told nouvelobs.com, the website that leaked the plans, that the pyramid was not a final draft but a "proposal" that would be "reworked" to improve its ecological credentials.

While the pyramid is breaking new ground in Paris, a string of far higher towers are already scheduled to spring up in the La Defense business district just outside the capital. There are currently 12 projects under way, including the Tour Generali, Le Phare (the lighthouse) and the Tour Signal - all over 300 metres high.

However, these could be under threat due to fallout from the global financial crisis.

The real estate arm of American investment bank Lehman Brothers, which just went bankrupt, owns Coeur Defense - Europe's largest office complex at the heart of La Defense. According to Le Monde, it will be obliged to sell the property at a loss, likely triggering a real estate and rental slump that could postpone several tower projects and even threaten their viability.

ugly.

yet another eyesore...

skyscrapers in Paris have almost always been aesthetic failures. Either your get a completely uninventive glass cylinder or brick (you can put some plastic covers on it, to out-ugly the Jones next door), or you get a single tower standing alone among low-rise buildings. Most often, it's both.

By contrast, in New York, Chicago or San Francisco, skyscrapers are architecturally inventive, diverse, and are located in the same district therefore forming a harmonious skyline. London is barely better than Paris.

It looks like the french placed a landing spot for a A380 with 550 french screaming passengers.

Lets hope the A380 lands there!

jackburton wrote:

It looks like the french placed a landing spot for a A380 with 550 screaming passengers.

Lets hope the A380 lands there!

jackburka, the filthy muzzie scum has spoken.

yet another eyesore...

skyscrapers in Paris have almost always been aesthetic failures. Either your get a completely uninventive glass cylinder or brick (you can put some plastic covers on it, to out-ugly the Jones next door), or you get a single tower standing alone among low-rise buildings. Most often, it's both.

By contrast, in New York, Chicago or San Francisco, skyscrapers are architecturally inventive, diverse, and are located in the same district therefore forming a harmonious skyline. London is barely better than Paris.

Well it's not that bad, there isn't much of a skyscraper in Paris proper, barely anything above 130m, most of the tall skyscrapers are located in the Defense area. American high rise architecture is well past its prime as well in my opinion.

Anyway, what the hell happened to architecture ? I want neo-gothic skyscrapers, Art Nouveau skyscrapers, I want Empire skyscrapers, I want wood and bricks and stone and iron. I want statues all the way up, I want arc boutants and gargoyles and chimeras!

I don't want weird looking glassy geometric shapes!

Give me this:

I would like to hear from all of our French citizens what they think of this building and about high rise buildings in Paris both.

Lily42 wrote:


Well it's not that bad, there isn't much of a skyscraper in Paris proper, barely anything above 130m, most of the tall skyscrapers are located in the Defense area. American high rise architecture is well past its prime as well in my opinion.

past its prime, but landmarks are still there. Just for my sweet home Chicago:
part of the skyline

Carbon and Carbide, from the late 20s


tribune tower:


from the 70s, the John Hancock center:


the aon center, probably the most expensive fuckup in architecture's history, but damn good looking:
(you can see the 2 prudential plaza, from the 90s, to its left)

united building, also from the 90s:


trump tower, nearing completion


and last but definitely not least, the Chicago spire, either a phallic symbol or a finger salute to the rest of the world:

It should be the tallest building in the world (in the highest floor category; antennas and decorative crap do not count).
(construction started, but it should be at least a couple of years before it is finished).

Well, I think the Standard Oil building is plain ugly, plain rectangular shape, greyish, yurk, not very fond of the John Hancock center either, and I'm afraid the suppository spire is not going to do it for me though I'll wait before I cast judgement on that. Pre war skyscrapers were so much more interesting in my opinion. Still some nice skyscrapers being built though, and yes, the landmarks are not going away.

GB_Gandalf wrote:

I would like to hear what they think about high rise buildings in Paris both.

Unfortunately, if you check what the so-called architects have done since WW II to our cities in Europe, you can only hope that all these things will never get realised.
As soon as you go out of the "old" Paris city center, it starts to get ugly.

Please, give us back Hausmann...

nice mosque

Pre war skyscrapers were so much more interesting in my opinion.

I agree. I always thought the Chrysler building was really something.

Mexican skyscraper

hmmm... Hausmann destroyed most of Paris - 90% of Paris medieval heritage disappeared under his rule. All he did was impose a uniform architecture style. He destroyed more churches than the revolutionnary terror, more antique buildings than the vandals.

Stonewall wrote:

I agree. I always thought the Chrysler building was really something.

art deco is the shit.

art deco is the shit.

Isn't it? It seems like practically everything made in the 30's (cars, buildings, furniture) had an elegance to it that hasn't been seen since.

Tribune tower, that is a beauty. The new stuff like that parisian pyramid looks like a designer played with a computer.

Note:
The French building has already been nicknamed "The Tower of Babel".
The Chicago Spire has already been nicknamed "Oprah's Dildo".

OMG

Well they say "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder".

Some of you speak of "Gothic Shit", that would resemble a surrealistic hangover. You know, post WWIII and has been erected to "Worship Satan". Some grossly fugly crap for the modern world to go back to the "dark ages". Oh yeah, modern Eurp. Black Death anyone?

The building they are suggesting, looks like a bad Acid Trip and damaged Lego's..

--- FFx3 and Paris.

looks like a bad Acid Trip and damaged Lego's..

Now that is funny!

As long as there's a McDonalds in the lobby the french will be happy

It's as ugly as the pickle.

Only a moron would invest in fruunch real estate if he/she were an infidel frog. Will be worthless when the muzz take over..

Grey

is this a haemorrhoid treatment ?