After a decade of controversy, work is about to begin on a rare high-rise tower in Paris, a 48-floor glass-clad pyramid that has been likened to the Shard in London.
A financing deal last week has opened the way to construction of la Tour Triangle, a € 700 million, 180-metre tower with a trapezoid base that will be built within the exhibition park of Porte de Versailles on the southern side of inner Paris.
The Triangle, which will include a 120-bedroom hotel and apartments, alongside office and cultural spaces, was conceived in 2008 in an effort by Bertrand Delanoë, the Socialist mayor, to help the architecturally conservative French capital to compete with the more innovative towers of London and other cities.
Designed by the Swiss agency Herzog & de Meuron, the Triangle ran into opposition from Parisians who remembered the 1970s blunder that produced the Tour Montparnasse, a 210m black obelisk long regarded as a blight on the Left Bank’s elegant skyline.
After rejecting the design in November 2014, the council, under Anne Hidalgo, Delanoë’s protegée and successor, approved the Triangle with modifications in 2015. In the meantime two other towers of similar height have emerged, like the Triangle, on the périphérique boulevard ring road, ending the 40-year freeze on high-rise construction.
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Philippe Goujon, mayor of the 15th arrondissement, home to the Triangle, remains opposed to the building which, he said, is rejected “by all the residents of the district”. Its owner, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW), the French property group, says construction will start this year, and finish in 2026.
While Paris has remained defiantly low-rise, la Défense, the business district on the western side of the capital, is studded with high-rise towers. The tallest, the 231m Tour First, is second only to the 324m Eiffel Tower in height in France.
