Docks de Paris / Jakob + MacFarlane
The Docks de Paris project by Paris based architecture studio Jakob + MacFarlane is nearing completion. The building was first designed in 2004 for a competition held by the city of Paris. Jakob + MacFarlane’s entry eventually won the competition and has been underway since 2007.
The project is actually a renovation of a concrete shipping depot originally built in 1907, which the architects chose to keep for the base of their new design. The architects are calling their design a ‘plug-over’ as the new structure is a new external skin that enveloped the existing site on the sides and on top. The river facing façade features a glass covered steel tube structure that is inspired by the flow of the river and its pedestrian promendades. The roof has also been developed using wooden decks and grassed areas. The front façade addition serves as the buildings circulation system allowing visitors to move between levels. Inside the new building will feature a variety of programming including galleries, retail shops, the french fashion institute, and cafes.
Seen at designboom. More images after the break.
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18 comments »
I think it’s better the idea than the final result..
I thought the idea was to build it? so what are you trying to say, that the final result was never the idea?
I think he means it looked better on paper :-)
I kind of like it – although I can’t really explain why. I also think it will look rather dated and out of fashion in a couple years. So, I guess I am sort of torn.
i kind feel the so-called ‘pedestrian tube’ a mimic of Pompidou escalator?
this building = epic fail
i used to like this when i started studying and got into funky shaped architecture, this looked great in books, but just hasnt panned out in reality
i recall seeing this project in an architecture picture book. the images are always nicer than the built structure, thats the problem with architecture today. offices celebrate their ideas via renderings that dont simulate the same effect when materialized, they are more static. my concern here is that the shape serves no purpose other than purely aesthetics, cheap.
It looks like crap in reallity. Bad details, unresolved corners, this building will look very dated in two years, one more bad building by the Seine.
Nice..for the city.
The interiors….mmmmmmmm
why cant we have more robert stern buildings. what’s wrong with people? they want to live in the future or something…
Why to build simple if we can make things complicated? Why common and usual if we can do strange? Well… architect can!
The problem is not the style of the building, but the architect. Jakob + MacFarlane are not known for doing great big project, they are better at interior design.
Stan, I hear you about wanting to live in the future, but we sure shouldn’t be living in the past either, so not…we don’t want more classicists.
of course not! Why not to do something more related to reality? something simple and good? keep me asking: what to say if i have to show this kind of things to the students?
i was being sarcastic…
i think robert stern is atrocious
Well Robert Stern?? Are u Nuts???
The problem of the building is the Main structure is too much robert stern! The plastic shape, looks really great, the problem is to be too much Facade, and that idea don’t be continue all over the building…but it is easy explained because the fact, it’s a restore, and the old structure is used to control the costs.
But, without being any kind of masterpiece it’s is for sure a great building, and for who, you said that it is “one more bad building by the Seine”, I can’t stop thinking what river got better on his edges? In a Distance from here of two Km you got the Library of France of Perrault, in the other side the house of cinema of Frank Gehry, …and you got also the faculty of architecture of Frederic Borel, and the Institute of Arabian World of Nouvel…saying just the most relevant..
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