Things I DO NOT want to see while riding my bike around Paris!!!

Rick Tulka
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Things I DO NOT want to see while riding my bike around Paris!!!
Things I DO NOT want to see while riding my bike around Paris!!!

Porte de Versailles. Projet Triangle: Paris Pyramid Building.

From the website e-architect: www.e-architect.co.uk/
Published by Isabelle Lomholt updated on November 18, 2014
Tour Triangle Skyscraper
Design: Herzog & de Meuron
Height: 40 storeys
Projet Triangle
Paris city council fights over new skyscraper.
The Paris City Council rejected plans for a new skyscraper on the city’s 19th-century skyline, in an exceptionally bitter vote Monday that embodies a larger debate over this city’s image, and its future, reports the Associated Press 17 Nov 2014.The fight isn’t over yet. The mayor immediately declared the Tour Triangle vote invalid, apparently hoping for a new round of balloting. The vote came down to a decision over whether Paris be preserved like the masterpieces and landmarks that draw the world’s tourists here, or embrace innovation and modern architecture. But the vote isn’t just about “preservation” of world-famous cityscape or about encouraging “innovative architecture” (what is actually innovative about this building?), it is about whether we desire appropriate scale / context insertions into our cities or endless bloated so-called icons? I recall years ago attending a debate about iconic architecture in Glasgow organised by Penny Lewis at Propsect magazine: Charles Jencks said architects shouldn’t waste time trying to fight iconic architecture, it was part of the market and rather than being a phase it would expand. I wasn’t convinced but crystal ball gazing tends to have limited useful results. Surely I’m not the only architect or human being who is tiring of endless iconic buildings sprouting across our historic cityscapes? The Montparnasse tower is a blight on Paris just like the Walie Talkie in London or the St James Centre in Edinburgh. The public will tend to accept landmarks over time – yes the Eiffel Tower wasn’t an overnight success for all – but acceptance is a layered matrix of design, location, meaning and appropriateness. The public can climb the Eiffel Tower, it is a public builidng, but what about the Tour Triangle, who is it for and why is it so high? Will the public be able to wander around in this oh-so-publicly visible skyscraper? The council voted 83-78 in a secret ballot against the Tour Triangle, a “cone-like glassy design that would be the third-highest tower in Paris after the Eiffel Tower and the Montparnasse tower, often decried as a modern blight on the city’s low-slung horizon”. Adrian Welch, editor

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Taken on: November 19, 2014
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