[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. — The Independent
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, despite the reported displeasure of those living in the 15th arrondissement where the building will ultimately be constructed. C'est la vie.
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Finally, Paris is entering the 21st century! I've always hated walking around it's faux classical boulevards. At least now I will know what century I live in. Thanks Herzog and De Meuron.
Sure, it's great when H&DM are allowed to build. But this opens the door for everyone to now scorch the earth and extrude garbage into the air. Imagine Paris in a hundred years. It's going to look like Dubai, and every other "city" in the world.
The Future is summed up in the phrase: “We are asked to take seriously the architectural taste of real-estate speculators, renting agents, and mortgage brokers.” (Alfred Barr)
This is Bad news. Note the B is capitalized.
Do we really know that is "opens the door for everyone"? Wouldn't future tall projects need approval as well?
For the time being, sure. Soon enough though, there will be enough filling the skies there that it won't really matter, and every Tom, Dick, and Henri will be given the green light to build however tall (height) and however low (quality) they want. This is the chink in the armor.
I cited Philadelphia in a prior tirade about this. City Hall there was the unofficial height limit. Since that restriction was erased there, has anything worthwhile been built over that height? I would argue not.
Office tower and hotel? Commercially driven projects. Money wins out and will continue to do so. In a hundred years you won't recognize Paris, or you will - because it will look just like every other city in the world.
Another tragedy. Wondering who got paid off and how much.
Menona,
I haven't been following this story closely.
Do you know if the Paris height limit is official or unofficial? Was this approval an exception to a statute or was it just a breach of etiquette?
It's shaped like a giant wedge of fromage.
My understanding is that the Paris limit is official and was put in place after a tower was put up in the 70's, when there was no real limit. I believe this case is an exception to a statute. But exceptions become precedents.
Then all of a sudden you look around and you're in hell, and wondering how you got there in such a seemingly innocuous handbasket.
Your Socratic questions would be much more useful if they were honest as opposed to simply being a patronizing effort to indicate your own self-worth.
I am calling the questions' honesty into question because your motives tend towards the narcissistic.
You rarely seem to give a shit about the answers and usually seem to be looking for an excuse to post another pixelated piece of "art" from your website.
citizen, thank you. I couldn't place that shape but you nailed it.
Hit a nerve?
what I dislike about London's skyline now and this is where Paris is headed,are all these strange tall buildings like a Gherkin (penis), a wedge, a convex car melting walkie talkie, a shard ( sounds like shit) .......all attempting to be icons i guess but just look stupid and stupidly placed........at least in NYC there is consistancy by neighborhoods.
thank god they're mimicking las vegas.
H+DM are Swiss, which is even more French than France, so they win
Buildings remind me of other things. Its all so stupid. Acckk! Not like in New York though, cuz New York's got neighborhoods, not like other cities.
davvid i would love to entertain probably one of the most ignorant statements you have ever made /\. those are real nicknames for those buildings i list - google it. nyc has had a zoning ordinance that deals fairly with tall buildings since 1916. Paris has La Defense, surely a BIG junkie like yourself read that Rem Koolhaas essay. now go back to making life decisions based on trends....this building is a HUGE fucking mistake.
But why should anyone care what a building is nicknamed? Should an architect try and create a building that is somehow not nicknamable? Its just such a ridiculous way to discuss architecture that I couldn't help myself. Sorry.
it points out the obvious one hit wonder nature of this shit you call trending.....It's beyond me why you are not into Nicknames, you are into BIG and fancy pants diagrams, no?
Exhibit A - London Skyline with a mish-mash of one hit wonders that received nicknames
Exhibit B - New York City skyline, a few discernible buildings, but most of them in context
Exhibit C - La Defense, Paris
/\ that's where you put the tall shit and corporate candy land, yada money huggers and gold diggers.
I don't call it "trending". You're the one who keeps overemphasizing fame, trends, hits etc. Even just describing someone as being "into" an architect seems adolescent. Just because I don't dismiss BIG's work out of hand, doesn't make me "into" the firm.
About those exhibits...
New York might look like a solid field of tall structures from far away but if you look closely, many of them have quite a lot of personality. Some of them were very controversial. Some of them are despised by many. Maybe that gets lost in over a century's worth of tall buildings but its still there. And at some point, an even taller and more unusual building is going to rise up above the rest and stand out like a "sore thumb". That is just part of the character of a modern city.
I realize that character is a tricky thing. Some people cannot deal with the fact that the character of a city changes. Some can deal with it.
Toronto in the 1960s:
New York in 2015:
NO. You do not have an eye for the city skyline. NYC is a 300-400 year old city. Paris and London are older. I don't know how else to explain this to you.
Disney World Abu Dhabi doesn't belong everywhere. Tall Piggy banks of investments have their place as you have clearly indicated above.
La Defense, Paris.
I'm done here.
You're not making a logical argument. You're not acknowledging the history of tall buildings in established cities and how they've affected the character and fabric of cities over time.
Dubai is quite different from all of the other cities mentioned because its growth rate was extremely fast and the tallest buildings didn't rise up from an existing urban fabric.
NO!
acknowledge what? NYC has had a zoning ordinance since 1916 best expressed by Hugh Ferriss back in the day as it would play out....
http://library.columbia.edu/locations/avery/da/collections/ferriss.html
and then London, Paris, Berlin, Roma, etc....all about 5-6 stories tall have existed for centuries based on other circumstances....
Frankfurt am Main was a US Western experiment in Germany.... Helmut Jahn's 80's Chicago transplant breaking a singular longest pour record
Frankfurt looks like any other American city from a plane above.
Listen, if there are any rascals that will absolutely deny some bull shit economic tall structures for practical Adam Smith like Capitalism it's the FRENCH!
/\ "What happens if all architecture older than 25 years is scraped? An entire territory is liberated as a strategic reserve. The city can think of itself in terms of creative transformations."
H&DM have sold there souls and now have joined all the other Starchitects that bend over for any developer at any cost! and its going to look like shit!
that rendering is SHIT, no matter how you spin it.
As you probably know, there was a very practical logic behind Ferris's diagrams.
And as you correctly suggested, many of the buildings that make up the 5-6 story urban fabric in paris were limited by construction technology.
But what is the logic behind limiting the height of buildings today?? Is it to preserve an old skyline? Is it to avoid creating a city that looks too "American"??
Just guessing, of course, but:
Preserve culture and a way of life. Respect of the symbolic identity of Paris and indeed much of France (Eiffel Tower). National pride and identity. Prevent the kind of rapacious urban development that has turned pretty much every major city into every other major city.
Or maybe just to increase the bribes for changeling the laws to prevent this kind of shit.
I like the image you posted of the London skyline. Buildings that try to compete for attention give it personality
Chicago has the best skyline of course. Best pizza too. There is enough diversity to keep it interesting.
I bet the future of cities will look like Omaha. Sort of like 'fuck context' but there isn't much context to start with.
The thing about Paris is that presently it is humanely scaled. To walk around Paris feels good. The size of the structures doesn't alienate the people on the street level. There is a comfortable resonance between the scale of a human being and the buildings. This kind of resonance doesn't exist in the locations where there are tall towers - be it NY, Chicago, Philadelphia, Etc.
I think the H&DM building is decent enough. Actually the triangular form of it is rather considerate when you think about it. That shape will cut down on the temporal amount of shadow it casts on its northern neighbors. That's probably not accidental.
But this project is really a ploy by developers and that class of people.
I wonder what the volume and total sf of built real estate in Manhattan is above the 13th floor (the current Paris limit, I think). Then I wonder what that amount of sf comes out to in dollar value of real estate. This project in Paris is simply a device to break the height limit there so that developers can start extruding garbage into the air above Paris and charging millions for "commanding views" and other crap like that. I bet the top five to fifteen floors of this H&DM thing will be sold or rented for some ungodly amount of money.
Here's Philadelphia. You can pick out City Hall there between the first two towers that broke the limit. And look at the things which are taller. Is there any architectural merit to any of them? Not really. And they're alienating. I was recently in Philadelphia. Parked in Old City (you will know that part of town from such hits as "The Declaration of Independence" and "The U.S. Constitution"). So that area is protected and remains humanely scaled. It's pedestrian friendly. That area was full of people and life.
Walked over to the Comcast Building (the tallest one in the pic - second from right). There's a big plaza in front of that building. It was completely empty, except for the security guy in a blazer with a walkie talkie. And that plaza is directly over a big train station. There was no one there. I wondered if the Zombie Apocalypse had begun.
The thing about these inhumaely scaled building is that they generate a relentlessness that degrades their immediate locus and quality of life in the city. Paris doesn't have much of this alienated quality now, but it will. This wedgie thing is the first of many. And they're all not going to be done by competent architects like H&DM.
And I believe someone mentioned it above, H&DM are allowing themselves to be used for this purpose and are complicit in the enterprise. They're smart enough to know what's going on. What does this say about the profession?
Paris is like a Girl Friend , So any big thing that we want for our girl friend is mostly cute,
Yet its hard to believe that Pairs is having a scraper , so it needs to be very cute that also depicts Love At the height of 50 meters..
:)
I can't believe the nihilistic, antihuman sentiments in this thread. The hatred for humanity is overwhelming and needs to be addressed. Chicago - best pizza? This rampant nihilism must be stopped. It's common knowledge that 99% of the pizza environment is inedible. #lombardismatters Rise up, people. Like fine yeasty dough. Rise up.
we all know deep dish chicago style pizza is actually casserole.
man, if mitch hedgburg was still around i would put him in charge of zoning....watching this hilarious Oklahoma city performance....its not funny but its factual! davvid man come on humanity.
To Menona and other's point(s), according to the article the height restriction rule was removed in 2010. This project isn't the exception it just didn't receive (initially at l;east) the equivalent of planning approval. The fact that is has now been approved doesn't indicate (necessarily) that there will suddenly be a rush of icon(ic) scrapers. Presumably each would have to be approved on it's merits (or lack thereof) like this one.
What does this say about the profession?
It's the world's oldest profession.
Thank you Nam.
it looks like it's located between two warehouses along the highway. This isn't the cutesy old walkable part of Paris, is it?
I'd be fine with things like this if it was easier to unbuild mistakes. It's hard to categorically reject all new buildings - some, like the Eiffel Tower or Pompidou Center turn out to be great.
Others, despite complying with height limits, etc turn out to be failures. See the subway-mall-disaster at Les Halles if you want an example of seemingly pedestrian, urban-scale architecture which is abysmal and gloomy.
But the failures endure, and make everyone afraid of letting anything else get done.
It's only a failure if it doesn't turn a fat profit.
Buildings are large and complex enough where they can succeed in some ways while failing in others. I realize that internet commentary tends to favor the "best/worst ____ ever" sort of extremes, but in reality its much more complicated.
I think the building might fail politically in the short term but succeed architecturally and socially in the long run.
davvid - your bottom rendering image... that's precisely what I'm talking about. That clearly shows the overwhelming, relentless, oppressiveness of something this size - and the absolute absence of any resonance with the human scale. Not to mention: That's how it transition at the ground? Geez.
The transition between an enormous object and the sidewalk looks to be about a 4" strip of detailing at the base. There's zero negotiation between the scale of the huge object, those huge glass panels, and - what are those, pavers?
And also, this looks like everywhere else. This could be in Miami, or Dubai or Melbourne. Actually it looks very much like the plaza I mentioned outside the Comcast Building in Philadelphia. This is perhaps worse than I imagined.
But Miles made an excellent point about the oldest profession. I thought I was being cynical, but as usual, I was only being embarrassingly naive.
Those little umbrellas aren't going to make it a comfortable pedestrian plaza. When the sun comes around to just so the entire facade becomes a mirror, baking the street with reflected light.
Light, shade, wind ... who cares? It's a pretty rendering, look at how nice those mature trees are.
This project sucks. If I did this as my thesis I would have failed...maybe a C if my professor was a moron...Horrible building done for the filthy rich by filthy cheap whore architects...
Menona,
Perhaps I would be more inclined to agree with you if I didn't see so many extremely large buildings in cities that resonate with the human scale. Look closely at the rendering and you will see many elements that respond to the scale of a pedestrian. The height of the first floor retail space, the height of the windows at the first floor, the height and scale of the signage, the width of the sidewalk and its accommodation of outdoor seating, and the trees.
Keep in mind that the experience of a pedestrian is very different than the experience of the skyline. In Manhattan, you can walk right by the Empire State Building without realizing it because the experience of pedestrian in primarily of the immediate environment. We don't stare straight up at the sky as we walk on the sidewalk or sit at a sidewalk cafe.
I really don't think that it will look like everywhere else. I think you're ignoring the experience of a well crafted building by a top architecture firm and the slight and subtle ways that they differ from generic buildings. I've been watching the work on 56 Leonard Street in NYC, also designed by H&deM, and you can already see a sophisticated understanding a scale, context, detail, and an attention to the experiential aspects of urban life in ways that generic towers in Battery Park City or Williamsburg fail.
I do think that you and Miles are being cynical about real estate development and architecture. I think you both are broadly applying a political impulse to contemporary architecture without considering the many many prominent buildings throughout architecture history that were also real estate gambits when they were first built. And Miles lives in the Hamptons and makes bespoke furniture. I find it very hard to believe that he is not also complicit in the luxury design market. Also, you're conflating an economic/political idea (capitalist real estate development) with an architectural/aesthetic idea (building height). In reality, there are extremely expensive and elite properties in short buildings (Again, see Hamptons) and there are tall buildings that provide affordable residential units for lower income people.
I think we just have very different ideas about scale in a building and how it relates (or should) to the user and the broader context of an urban environment. And there's nothing wrong with that. While I see all those things you mentioned, they don't appear to me to do the things you claim them to.
Interesting point about the Empire State Building. What though does that say about the building if you can walk right by something of that size and not even notice. To not be able to tell that you're standing next to something of such "XL"-ness? That seems problematic. Because you're very correct. I did walk by and the only thing that made me notice was the series of helpful people offering me tickets to the top. You can't walk by the Eiffel Tower and not notice. But Manhattan is its own thing and the skyscraper type and its corollary conditions are all very valid there.
But as for being cynical about real estate development and architecture, well - aren't they building expensive tall things in Brooklyn now? And I'm talking about opening up the skies of Paris. That's what this is really all about. Which I don't like, but I don't live there so it doesn't really impinge on my day to day.
davvid, stick to the point, we're talking about THIS building. And why the silence on my observations about the plaza?
What plaza? Do you mean the strip of pavement in front of the building in the rendering that posted?
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