“Tours Duo” Mixed-Use Complex

Three years ago, following several rejected proposals to allow high-rise buildings in Paris, Jean Nouvel was able to build Tours Duo, a complex of two towers of 180 and 125 m. Nouvel did not follow Louis Sullivan’s observations in his celebrated text “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered” (1896), making no attempt to compare it to a classical column with a base, a middle and a capital. On the contrary, his towers emerge as elongated shafts moving skyward.

Ever since its inauguration on 16 June 1973, the Tour Montparnasse, an American skyscraper lookalike – designed by a group of French architects supported by André Malraux and the then-President of the Republic, Georges Pompidou – has prompted a strongly negative response from the public. The criticism has been misdirected, however, leveled at the building’s height rather than its ugliness. In fact, it could relatively easily be stripped down and dressed in a more appealing fashion. The upshot, though, was the absurd rules that forbade any building that would rival the height of the Sacré-Cœur Basilica overlooking the city. So, nearly 200 years after the Revolution, the religious significance of Montmartre acquired an additional significance. When first built, the Tour Eiffel was subject to endless ridicule but with time acquired an unassailable place of honor and boundless admiration from many, including Roland Barthes, who, among its other virtues, extolled the structure’s transparency. And yes, there is La Défense where tall buildings are welcome, but this is practically outside the city.

Could Nouvel’s Duo become the new paradigm for the city of Paris? The architect himself hesitated to assert as much. The battles lost by so many other tall-building proposals discourage any assumptions about the urban future of Paris. Could it be that such a profoundly secular city will protect its religious memory so...

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