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The Tour Montparnasse in Paris recently turned 50. We spoke about that over here. But having visited the tower last week, including its top observation deck, I can now confidently say that I understand why many/most Parisians dislike it so much.
It is a complex that could be in any city in the world and it is clear that it has been seeing disinvestment for quite some time (presumably due to its upcoming renovation).
However, a lot of the discussion seems to be focused on how its built form is a towering contrast to the rest of Paris. This is, of course, correct. But the same is true of the Eiffel Tower. One big and important difference is how these two towers meet the ground.
La Tour Eiffel sits in a beautiful landscaped park where people sit and hang out (photo by me):
Whereas the Tour Montparnasse is disconnected from its surrounding context. It feels like that train station on the wrong side of town (photos from Google Streetview):
So it's no wonder that its height gets picked on. What is implicit in this treatment of the ground plane is a belief that this tower is not worthy of celebrating. It does not deserve a beautiful park. And it does not deserve to be a ceremonial view terminus like every other icon in Paris.
Thankfully, the current design for its renovation appears to address this (rendering via Nouvelle AOM):
And this is arguably the most important design move. Ironically, what happens at the ground level could be what makes people finally appreciate what happens up top.
The Tour Montparnasse in Paris recently turned 50. We spoke about that over here. But having visited the tower last week, including its top observation deck, I can now confidently say that I understand why many/most Parisians dislike it so much.
It is a complex that could be in any city in the world and it is clear that it has been seeing disinvestment for quite some time (presumably due to its upcoming renovation).
However, a lot of the discussion seems to be focused on how its built form is a towering contrast to the rest of Paris. This is, of course, correct. But the same is true of the Eiffel Tower. One big and important difference is how these two towers meet the ground.
La Tour Eiffel sits in a beautiful landscaped park where people sit and hang out (photo by me):
Whereas the Tour Montparnasse is disconnected from its surrounding context. It feels like that train station on the wrong side of town (photos from Google Streetview):
So it's no wonder that its height gets picked on. What is implicit in this treatment of the ground plane is a belief that this tower is not worthy of celebrating. It does not deserve a beautiful park. And it does not deserve to be a ceremonial view terminus like every other icon in Paris.
Thankfully, the current design for its renovation appears to address this (rendering via Nouvelle AOM):
And this is arguably the most important design move. Ironically, what happens at the ground level could be what makes people finally appreciate what happens up top.
So, Herzog and de Meuron are building this trapezoidal-shaped tower in Paris right now.
It's 158m tall and about 40 storeys (which makes it comparable in height to One Delisle). It's extremely narrow in one direction (see above), and so from central Paris it is intended to be read as a kind of thin pencil tower. But when viewed in the east-west direction, you get the full width of its trapezoidal shape (see above, again).
Not surprisingly, this has been a highly contentious development -- which is why it was 15 years in the making. It is now under construction, though, and it is expected to be completed sometime in 2026. But this is likely to be the last tower in Paris for quite some time.
Partially because of this Triangle Tower, Paris has just decided to ban tall buildings in the city. The new height limit is now back to 37 meters (or 12 storeys), which is essentially the same height cap that was put in place in 1977 following completion of the Tour Montparnasse.
So this is seemingly how things work in Paris. Somebody builds a tall tower. People mostly hate it. And then the city bans tall buildings for a number of decades. The previous height cap was relaxed in 2010. (Also, for those of you who are wondering, La Défense, which is generally where Paris puts its tall buildings, is outside of the city limits.)
Regardless, I think there's no question that this new Triangle Tower is destined to become an iconic punctuation in the city's skyline. Which means that we're probably going to have to update our thinking. If Paris, today, is sometimes thought of as a city with two principal towers -- the Eiffel Tower and the "awful tower" -- it will soon be a city with three principal towers.
Perhaps the only question that remains is: Will people learn to love it like the Eiffel Tower or will it end up as another Tour Montparnasse?
Image: Herzog and de Meuron
This morning, I came across an FT article talking about how mainland Chinese people are right now flocking to Macau to receive western mRNA vaccines. Apparently the Special Administrative Region has a single hospital offering the western varietals to "tourists", and lots of people now want them and presumably think they are more efficacious than the Chinese alternatives. This is not surprising.
So what actually stood out to me was the photo that FT chose for the article. It's of the half-scale Eiffel Tower replica that was built as part of a $2.5 billion casino resort in Macau known as The Parisian Macao (pictured above). There's even a faux Louvre-like building behind it and a "Jardin" in front of it so you can get that axial view of the tower. Welcome to Paris!
Of course, this is not the sort of thing that excites me in the least. I understand why it is done and that there is clearly a market for it, but I don't get it. It feels totally empty. Have we really run out of new ideas? So I decided to tweet something out to this effect and, in it, I included the fun fact that Macau is a former Portuguese colony and currently a Special Administrative Region of China, just like Hong Kong.
But it turns out that you can't say this on Twitter. I don't know why, but my tweet was immediately filtered out of my feed -- twice. Instead what you can say is "Macau is a SAR of a country that starts with C and ends with A." Apparently, this is acceptable Twitter language. Hmm. This has never happened to me before.
Thankfully, I have my own domain (which you are now reading from) where things are much freer. And collectively, we have things like the Ethereum Name Service, which is trying to create an even more censorship-resistant version of the internet. So today I decided that it was time to cancel my Twitter Blue account and put some more money into ENS tokens. This feels more like the future.
So, Herzog and de Meuron are building this trapezoidal-shaped tower in Paris right now.
It's 158m tall and about 40 storeys (which makes it comparable in height to One Delisle). It's extremely narrow in one direction (see above), and so from central Paris it is intended to be read as a kind of thin pencil tower. But when viewed in the east-west direction, you get the full width of its trapezoidal shape (see above, again).
Not surprisingly, this has been a highly contentious development -- which is why it was 15 years in the making. It is now under construction, though, and it is expected to be completed sometime in 2026. But this is likely to be the last tower in Paris for quite some time.
Partially because of this Triangle Tower, Paris has just decided to ban tall buildings in the city. The new height limit is now back to 37 meters (or 12 storeys), which is essentially the same height cap that was put in place in 1977 following completion of the Tour Montparnasse.
So this is seemingly how things work in Paris. Somebody builds a tall tower. People mostly hate it. And then the city bans tall buildings for a number of decades. The previous height cap was relaxed in 2010. (Also, for those of you who are wondering, La Défense, which is generally where Paris puts its tall buildings, is outside of the city limits.)
Regardless, I think there's no question that this new Triangle Tower is destined to become an iconic punctuation in the city's skyline. Which means that we're probably going to have to update our thinking. If Paris, today, is sometimes thought of as a city with two principal towers -- the Eiffel Tower and the "awful tower" -- it will soon be a city with three principal towers.
Perhaps the only question that remains is: Will people learn to love it like the Eiffel Tower or will it end up as another Tour Montparnasse?
Image: Herzog and de Meuron
This morning, I came across an FT article talking about how mainland Chinese people are right now flocking to Macau to receive western mRNA vaccines. Apparently the Special Administrative Region has a single hospital offering the western varietals to "tourists", and lots of people now want them and presumably think they are more efficacious than the Chinese alternatives. This is not surprising.
So what actually stood out to me was the photo that FT chose for the article. It's of the half-scale Eiffel Tower replica that was built as part of a $2.5 billion casino resort in Macau known as The Parisian Macao (pictured above). There's even a faux Louvre-like building behind it and a "Jardin" in front of it so you can get that axial view of the tower. Welcome to Paris!
Of course, this is not the sort of thing that excites me in the least. I understand why it is done and that there is clearly a market for it, but I don't get it. It feels totally empty. Have we really run out of new ideas? So I decided to tweet something out to this effect and, in it, I included the fun fact that Macau is a former Portuguese colony and currently a Special Administrative Region of China, just like Hong Kong.
But it turns out that you can't say this on Twitter. I don't know why, but my tweet was immediately filtered out of my feed -- twice. Instead what you can say is "Macau is a SAR of a country that starts with C and ends with A." Apparently, this is acceptable Twitter language. Hmm. This has never happened to me before.
Thankfully, I have my own domain (which you are now reading from) where things are much freer. And collectively, we have things like the Ethereum Name Service, which is trying to create an even more censorship-resistant version of the internet. So today I decided that it was time to cancel my Twitter Blue account and put some more money into ENS tokens. This feels more like the future.
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