Multi-use towers in France

Post date: Jan 27, 2011 12:50:55 AM

On the Twentieth Century, Skyscrapers were conceived as an optimal way to organize working spaces. Office

plans piled up one over the other so the efficiency in movement and communications became the best possible.

However, today the tower typology has transcended the functional boundaries and other activities such as

housing, retail or recreation have occupied these buildings.

Nowadays, skyscrapers that combine residential units with offices and hotels are common in big cities

agendas. Especially French cities have become the target for many multi-use tower proposals. This is the case

of the Grenelle tower that combines offices, residential units and recreational spaces in a 200m high building in

the center of Paris. These spaces coexist not only inside the tower but also on the same levels. The author of

the project, A/ZC Architects, states that “all the richness of the city is transposed vertically into towers of

shifting density”.

Images: A/ZC Architecture

Also in Paris, Abalos+Sentkiewicz proposes a tower that combines housing, parking, offices, commercial,

education, culture, sports and a hotel into a total area of 24,000 m2. The project, as a punctual intervention,

aims to transform radically the complex and degraded surrounded area.

Images: Abalos+Sentkiewicz

Finally, La Tour Vivante by SOA proposes a skyscraper that includes housing, offices, retail space and vertical

farm in the French city of Rennes. The project explores the idea of including a productive landscape into a

dense urban fabric and reducing the distance between the places of consumption and those of production.

Images: SOA

Nevertheless, none of these projects have been started and we will have to wait still some time to see the

results of these proposals. Personally, I believe these buildings have a lot of potential as urban catalyst and

therefore, as city-makers.