Friday, September 26, 2008

Skyscraping Paris

Beautiful, quaint, historic Paris?Miraculously preserved by mad corporate development -- apart from freak incidents such as the Tour Montparnasse or Quais de Seine -- Paris used to ban "corporate" edifices to suburban office districts such as La Défense. Not anymore. Thanks (or no thanks) to its modernist and egomaniac extraordinaire mayor Bertrand Delanoë, Paris is set to "welcome" six new Dubai/China-style skyscrapers in the near future, writes the Saudi Gazette -- the first one by Swiss architects Herzog & De Meuron. Are we seduced? No. Baffled? Neither. Urban evolution oblige. More via Le Point.
illustration via Le Blagueur