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High-Rise Paris
Architects have warmly welcomed plans by the Socialist Mayor of Paris to build high-rise towers within the perimeter of the city. Green campaigners, conservatives and the public aren't too keen, however.
The Paris city council voted recently to consider plans to build blocks exceeding the city's 37 metre limit in six "exceptional" designated zones on the outer limits of the city. Mayor Bertrand Delanoë's team have selected Masséna-Bruneseau (XIIIe arrondissement), Bercy-Charenton (XIIe), porte de la Chapelle (XVIIIe), Clichy-Batignolles (XVIIe), porte de Montreuil (XXe) and porte de Versailles (XVe) as potential sites for high-rise buildings, which will include social housing to solve what the city hall describes as the capital's housing crisis.
Housing will be limited to around 50 metres (15 floors) in height, offices and public buildings may be allowed to go as high as 200m.
Architects look enviously at developments in London, Berlin and further afield in China and wonder why Paris - which has a claim to be Europe's artistic capital - lacks opportunities for them to express themselves. French architect Jean Nouvel has built some popular low-rise structures in Paris (the Institute of the Arab World, the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art and the new Musée du quai Branly among them, but has called for the rules to be revoked to allow for taller buildings. Paris "risks becoming a museum city" he said. Until now, the most prestigious high rise projects near Paris have been built in the "mini Manhattan" business district in La Defence, just to the west of the city. Nouvel is building a 300 metre tower there - as tall as the Eiffel Tower.
Paris famously escaped the sort of damage inflicted on London and Berlin during the Second World War. Its strict planning laws gives the city a further uniformity. Back in 1987, Prince Charles caused great controversy by claiming that architects, developers and planners did more harm to London than the Luftwaffe. Will Delanöe's tentative scrapping of Paris's laws leave the French capital open to a similar fate?
Most of the above sites enjoy a certain amount of contemporary architecture already. They are mainly on the outskirts of the city proper, just within the Boulevard Périphérique which encircles central Paris. At the first site in the 13th arrondisement, a number of high-rise apartment blocks already exist, dating to before the 37 metre rule was introduced in 1977. The Paris side of porte de Montreuil faces a number of high rise commercial developments across the BP; the same is true of porte de la Chapelle, where the edgy neighbourhood gives way to high rises in the banlieue which surround railway lines leading from the Gare du Nord.
So, in other words, while the high towers will change the skyline of the famously uniform French capital, they won't dominate Paris in anything like the way the notorious Tour Montparnasse does, looming over the picturesque rive gauche. The new buildings, if they go ahead, will blend into the surrounding banlieue, which is, one suspects, part of the plan. Politicians as diverse as Delanoë and Nicolas Sarkozy have called for Paris to be "reconciled" with the sometimes impoverished housing developments which surround much of the city in a "Greater Paris." Concreting over the Boulevard Périphérique and smoothing the most boundaries with high rise buildings is one way to make the journey from Paris to its surroundings less of a border crossing.
Delanoë acknowledges that he has won the support of the council but that winning Parisians over to his scheme will prove more difficult. Parisians might be a left-leaning bunch, but are quite conservative when it comes to changing the height restriction. The Tour Montparnasse, widely regarded as a monstrosity, stands as a warning to relaxing planning laws; in the dead centre of the city, the 1970s Les Halles development has been loathed since the old market was demolished. Plans to demolish the shopping hub released during Delanoë's previous term as Mayor were greeted with jubilation by many Parisians.
The gloating from architects eager to make their mark on the city won't serve to calm Parisian fears. The Guardian reports architect Michel Angevin saying: "This is just the beginning. Paris is going to change, and will look very different soon enough."
We've heard this before. Architect Le Corbusier proposed the notorious Plan Voisin for Paris in 1925 (see image) which would have seen much of the right-bank of the Seine flattened and replaced with a series of high rise tower blocks. Looking at it nearly a century on, one imagines his scheme as some sort of "modest proposal" satire. It seems he was serious, though.
Life in these visions has rarely been as utopian as the architects imagined it would be. However, Le Corbusier is worshipped as a good in French architecture schools.
Greens, who usually work in coalition with Delanoë's Socialists, oppose the plans. One spokesman described high-rise buildings as "the architectural equivalent of SUVs" because of their energy use. There are also complaints about how these "gratte-ciel" (as the French call skyscrapers) will affect the visual environment of Paris: What contemporary architects deem beautiful is not always in accord with the tastes of the public.
Parisians writing to comment on the proposals on blogs and newspapers have wondered why development cannot continue in places already reserved for high rises outside central Paris, such as La Defence. Scrapping the planning regulations is seen as a dangerous precedent, which could lead to commercial pressure to transform the Paris skyline forever. Sarko-Delanoë plans for a "greater Paris" with improved transport links to the suburbs will ease pressure on housing in the capital, without the need to build big and tall.
We can't find any architect who admits he wants to see Paris squaring up to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates or some Asian tiger by planning mile-high towers. However, it is rather dismaying to see that over a century since the birth of the skyscraper, this form of structure is still viewed by the profession as the most prestigious way for architects to make their mark on a city. Surely designing innovative, green, community-friendly housing and office space is a better use of their time - and our space?
