Frank Gehry has revealed that French president Francois Hollande has given him his word that he could self-exile to France now that Donald Trump has been elected the 45th President of the United States.

[...]

With the bleak prognostic becoming a reality, the starchitect might see himself emigrating to a new country, with a big welcome from its leader. — artnet

They developed a succession of structures and styles that span many centuries and yet — magically, convincingly — cohere in a pleasing whole...Some of France’s greatest architects — Philibert Delorme, Ange-Jacques Gabriel and André Le Nôtre among them — fashioned buildings, courtyards, interiors and elaborate grounds...What greets the visitor today is the single greatest assemblage over time of French architecture and décor still in its original state. — NYT

[...] the stalagmite rings were older than any known cave painting. It also meant that they couldn’t have been the work of Homo sapiens. Their builders must have been the only early humans in the south of France at the time: Neanderthals.

The discovery suggested that Neanderthals were more sophisticated than anyone had given them credit for. They wielded fire, ventured deep underground, and shaped the subterranean rock into complex constructions. — theatlantic.com

Thanks to in situ artist Daniel Buren, the white glassy curved sails of the Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris have received a generous splash of vibrant color — or 13 colors, to be exact...Developed in collaboration with Frank Gehry, Buren's temporary piece, titled “The Observatory of Light“, made its official debut this past Wednesday. It took 29 nights over a period of five weeks to apply the dyed filters and white 8.7 cm-wide strips throughout the building's 3,528 glass panes. — Bustler

This fall, the Jewish Museum will present what it’s billing as the first United States exhibition devoted to the work of Pierre Chareau, a French Modernist who for decades fell out of the mainstream history of art and architecture [...]

Chareau (1883-1950) was a prolific designer and art collector in France, and best known for his Maison de Verre (“Glass House”), a landmark building in Paris created in 1928 in collaboration with the Dutch architect Bernard Bijvoet... — the New York Times

Unveiled this week, the €1bn redevelopment is the largest infrastructure project that Paris has undertaken in decades, aiming to fix the messy tangle where Europe’s biggest underground station disgorges 750,000 passengers a day into a labyrinthine warren of shops [...]

It is hugely overwrought, the layered steel roof pulled to and fro in tortured twists and turns, forming a contorted rollercoaster of curved trusses and angled bracing... — the Guardian

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