French designer Patrick Jouin has shared with us his latest project for client JCDecaux – a high tech bus stop (free Wifi anyone?) situated at the corner of Boulevard Henry IV and Place de la Bastille in Paris. Jouin has collaborated with JCDecaux on urban furniture since 2007, most notably for Vélib, the public bicycle sharing system in Paris. — bustler.net

Yes, it's still a bus shelter, but the idea is to make it both more useful and more of a social space. People may come here for a range of things other than catching the bus, so that social interaction and the life of the street intermix with waiting to produce a more vibrant, interesting, and safe environment. — humantransit.org

LAN Architecture recently completed 70° Sud, an apartment building in Boulogne-Billancourt, a western suburb of Paris. The project emerged as the winner of a competition back in 2008. — bustler.net

The Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris today announced Ball-Nogues Studio from Los Angeles as the winner of the 2012 edition of the “Pavillon Spéciale” competition. Now in its 2nd edition, the Pavillon Spéciale consolidates its role as an annual spring architectural series that gives young emerging international architects the opportunity to build with students a temporary project in the heart of Paris. — bustler.net

Foster + Partners announced today that Hermitage Plaza, the ambitious high-rise project in Paris, France, has been approved and was granted the Permis de Construire. The twisted twin towers – at 320 meters aiming to be Western Europe's tallest mixed-use towers – promise to create a new community to the east of La Défense, bringing the life of central Paris to the business district with a riverside park lined with cafes and restaurants. — bustler.net

In 2008, the substantially updated town center of Plessis-Robinson, a suburb of Paris, was named “the best urban neighborhood built in the last 25 years” by the European Architecture Foundation. A composite of six connected districts ranging in size from 5.6 to 59 acres, the revitalization comprises public buildings, retail, market-rate and subsidized affordable housing, parks, schools, gardens, sports facilities, and a hospital. Construction was begun in 1990 and took a decade to complete. — switchboard.nrdc.org

Through meticulous infiltration, UX members have carried out shocking acts of cultural preservation and repair, with an ethos of “restoring those invisible parts of our patrimony that the government has abandoned or doesn’t have the means to maintain.” The group claims to have conducted 15 such covert restorations, often in centuries-old spaces, all over Paris. — wired.com

A group of consultants in Paris has hatched a plan to turn the Eiffel Tower into a giant tree by covering it with 600,000 plants. Their dream is to literally plant the 324 meter tall aesthetic symbol of Paris with 12 tons of rubber tubing, and gradually add bags planted with greenery all over. — Inhabitat

Danish and French architects BIG & OFF, engineers Buro Happold, consultants Michel Forgue and environmental engineer Franck Boutte is the winning team to design the new 15,000 m2 research center for Sorbonne Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris. The winning team was honored as the best design among proposals from MVRDV, Lipsky Rollet, Mario Cucinella and Peripherique. — bustler.net

Located in the heart of historic Paris, Silencio is a 2,100-square-foot members-only nightclub that consists of a series of one-off rooms, plus a live stage with a reflective dance floor and 24-seat cinema. It grew, Navot says, out of a two-year process working with Lynch in Paris and in Los Angeles at the director’s home, with talks over the phone or on Skype. — fastcodesign.com

A design competition opened in December 1860 with a month's deadline; it drew 171 submissions. The winning architect, Garnier, was a blacksmith's son who had studied at the École des Beaux Arts, taking its Grand Prix de Rome for architecture in 1848. — online.wsj.com

This work of art looks like a giant grass sphere, but it's actually flat.

This land art is an anamorphosis which is a distorted projection that comes to life when viewed at the proper angle. Stand to the side and you will see angular grass and dirt. Stand at the correct angle and the 3D image jumps out at you. — gizmodo.com

"Zaha Hadid, une architecture" will be the first exhibition held inside the Mobile Art pavilion since the installation of the pavilion in front of the Institut du monde arabe. — e-flux.com

... a new exhibit is having fun imagining what [Paris] will look like in the year 2100: 2º C warmer, due to climate change, but also a whole lot greener, where pedestrians rule and every building has a roof garden. — treehugger.com