France is to make its first attempt at timber tower construction with two tall wooden buildings in Bordeaux.

The towers, reaching 50m and 57m in height, will be developed in the centre of the city by Bordeaux Euratlantique, a public body involved in modernising Bordeaux.

The project team for “Hypérion”, the 18-storey (57m) residential tower, will include Eiffage, specialist wood contractor Woodeum, social landlord Clairsienne and architect Jean-Paul Viguier & Associés. — globalconstructionreview.com

The Palace at Versailles has announced that Olafur Eliasson will display his artworks at the palace and its gardens this year. The Icelandic-Danish artist's exhibition will be on view from June through October, following the well-received installations of contemporary art at the baroque symbol of absolute monarchy by Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos, and French artist Xavier Veilhan... — artnet.com

According to leaked documents France's Ministry of Interior is considering two new proposals: a ban on free and shared Wi-Fi connections during a state of emergency, and measures to block Tor being used inside France.

The documents were seen by the French newspaper Le Monde. According to the paper, new bills could be presented to parliament as soon as January 2016. These proposals are presumably in response to the attacks in Paris last month where 130 people were murdered. — Ars Technica

French architects [SCAU] are planning to build a 'water wheel hotel' on the banks of the Seine, which resembles the London Eye but with 'room capsules' that would rotate constantly. ...[However,] the wheel hotel is not intended to be a permanent structure. 'It is made of wood and it will only take four days to assemble or dismantle it, so it could be transported by barge and re-erected elsewhere on the river' [said Maxime Barbier of SCAU] — The Telegraph

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. — thelocal.fr

Accepted wisdom has it that the continuing social unrest in the banlieues, as these suburbs are called, is a direct result of their built form: repetitive slabs and blocks of modern housing, often in large isolated estates. [...]

In fact, environmental determinism accompanied the very making of the French suburbs in the postwar period and the development of modern urbanism more generally.

Why is it that we assign so much power to buildings? — blog.oup.com

In the mid-1960s, the De Gaulle-instigated Mission Racine to develop Languedoc-Roussillon’s tourist economy created six modernist seaside resorts from scratch, each a day’s boat ride apart – still one of the largest state-run development schemes ever.

...there was some ideological overlap between the purifying doctrines of naturism and modernism: Le Corbusier himself enjoyed airing his bits on the Cote d’Azur and shared the same teacher as Cap d’Agde’s chief architect, Jean le Couteur. — the Guardian

Uber France CEO Thibaud Simphal and Uber Europe GM Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty were both taken into custody today in Paris [...]

The two executives were charged with two different allegations. First, according to them, Uber is running illegal taxi operations. Uber has been struggling with this charge in many countries, starting with the U.S. Second, the police said that Uber France is concealing digital documents... — Tech Crunch

French taxi drivers pulled out the throttle in an all-out confrontation with the ultra-cheap Uber car service Thursday, smashing livery cars, setting tires ablaze and blocking traffic during a nationwide strike that caught tourists and celebrities alike in the mayhem. — washingtonpost.com

Vancouver architect Michael Green is proposing to alter the iconic Parisian skyline — by building the world's tallest wooden building...'Just as Gustave Eiffel shattered our conception of what was possible a century and a half ago, this project can push the envelope of wood innovation with France in the forefront,' said Green in a press release. — cbc.ca

A new law recently passed in France mandates that all new buildings that are built in commercial zones in France must be partially covered in either plants or solar panels.

Green roofs, as they are called, have an isolating effect which helps to reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building during the winter or cool it in the summer. They are capable of retaining rainwater and reducing problems with runoff, and also offer birds a place to call home in the urban jungle. — CS Globe

This modernist villa on the Côte d’Azur, designed by Irish architect Eileen Gray, has witnessed wartime shootings, murder and vandalism by Le Corbusier. Now, at last, it has been brought back to life [...]

Le Corbusier visited and, apparently outraged that a woman could have made such a significant work in a style he considered his own, assaulted it with a series of garish and ugly wall paintings, which he chose to execute completely naked. — theguardian.com