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MVRDV completes Gaîté Montparnasse block transformation in the heart of Paris

2022-11-08T16:42:00-05:00

MVRDV has shared details on its just-completed Gaîté Montparnasse block renovation in the French capital.

The project transformed Pierre Dufau’s once iconic 1974 Ilôt Vandamme design into a more welcoming mixed-use site just south of the Tour Montparnasse facing Avenue du Maine.

“This piece of the city was like an island of ‘70s nostalgia — a tower with no visible entrance, and a plinth where you could get lost between the pedestrian slabs and automobile boulevards,” MVRDV founder Winy Maas explained. “The first step in the design was a study to fragment the block and to make sustainable density — adding new programs such as homes and revealing hidden ones like the library. It created a kind of explosion of buildings that combines large and small scale, existing and new programs, where everything mixes and opens up to the city with lobbies and windows of varying scales like so many addresses.”

Image: Ossip van Duivenbode courtesy MVRDV

By splitting the massing using a tonal glazed cl...

Construction starts for MVRDV's redesign of the ’70s Vandamme Nord building in Montparnasse

2018-02-15T14:29:00-05:00

Approved back in 2015, MVRDV's plans to redesign and expand the 1970s Vandamme Nord shopping complex in Montparnasse, Paris have officially begun. First built by architect Pierre Dufau, the shopping center's glory days faded as it failed to adapt to a changing urban environment over the years.

MVRDV's restructuring scheme for the new Gaîté Montparnasse complex aims to improve its urban connectivity and to make it a pedestrian-friendly space. According to the latest details from MVRDV, the Vandamme Nord will be expanded into a 108,000 m2 mixed-use building with a new program on the roof, a hotel, office space, 62 social housing units, a 350 m2 kindergarten, and new entrances on Avenue du Maine and Rue Mouchotte. The Vandamme public library will be moved from its current underground location to the top of the building.

Rendering © L'Autre Image.

The facade will be opened up and fragmented into a “collection of boxes” that will be inserted into the existing str...

Can a massive makeover turn Montparnasse into the Times Square of Paris?

2015-09-09T15:00:00-04:00

Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has suggested the area around the Tour Montparnasse skyscraper could become the Times Square of the French capital. Now its owners plan to try and make that dream come true. [...] The owners of the 59-storey building are due to launch an international architecture competition next year to revamp the brown tower block and the shopping mall at its base with a major makeover that could cost up to €700 million.

Related on Archinect:

Paris approves its first skyscraper of the 21st century

2015-07-01T12:52:00-04:00

[Paris] has not built a modern skyscraper since the 1970s, when the 231-metre tall Tour Montparnasse sprung up – much to the horror of the locals, many of whom still consider it an eyesore.

In a narrow vote, the city of lights approved Herzog & de Meuron's Tour Triangle, a 42-story skyscraper that will be the tallest building to be built in Paris since the 1970s. In 2010, the city voted to remove its multi-decade-long height restrictions of 36 meters on new buildings, which were put in place after the erection of the widely unpopular Tour Montparnasse. With a proposed height of 180 meters, Tour Triangle is Paris' first official skyscraper of the 21st century, although it required two voting sessions to win approval. In November of 2014, the city council voted down the plan, but mayor Anne Hidalgo called for another vote, dismissing the first round due to what she believed was political inter-party fighting.

The Tour Triangle will supply 70,000 square feet of office space, a four star hotel with 120 rooms, and what has been described as a "Shard-esque Sky Bar." These amenities do not seem wildly out of place for a metropolitan area with a population of 12 million, des...

MVRDV approved to redesign the '70s Vandamme Nord block in Montparnasse, Paris

2015-02-25T15:28:00-05:00

MVRDV officially got the green light from the City of Paris for their plans to restructure the Vandamme Nord at Gaîté-Montparnasse in Paris' 14th arrondissement. Built in the early 1970s by French architect Pierre Dufau, the mixed-use complex is located on a triangular island bordered by Rue Mouchotte, Avenue du Maine, and the rail tracks to Gare Montparnasse.

The Vandamme was once a landmark as one of the largest urban projects at the time, but -- with dying malls continuing to be the norm -- its glory days faded away as it failed to keep up with a changing urban society.

Aiming to renew a sense of place within the Montparnasse district and improve public accessibility, MVRDV plans to give the building a new façade as well as completely reorganize and open up the building's internal program. The complex will be broken up into a collection of "boxes" inserted in the existing structural frame that will vary in size, program, color, and materials, and will also be flexibly designed for...