Paris: The Latest Architecture and News

+ 27

This article was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "The Fascinating History of Le Corbusier’s Lost Barge."

This winter, France experienced some of the heaviest rains it has seen in 50 years. In Paris, the Seine flooded its banks, submerging parks, streets, and disrupting metro service. The deluge also claimed an architectural curiosity. On February 8th the Louise-Catherine, a concrete barge renovated by Le Corbusier, slipped below the murky waters of the Seine and came to rest on the bottom of the river by Quai D’Austerlitz on the east side of Paris.

As the floodwaters receded, the 100-year-old barge’s bow became stuck on the wharf, tipping it into the river, according to Le Parisien. Though firefighters were present and attempted to save the historic vessel, it filled with water and sank in a matter of minutes.

Chicago-based Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) have won an international competition for the design of an enhanced urban district in Charenton-Bercy, on the eastern edge of Paris. Working with a team of urbanists, landscape designers and community think tanks, SOM have proposed a highly connected urban landscape incorporating a 180-meter energy efficient tower, and contemporary rotunda serving as a virtual reality hub.

+ 19

+ 25

Applications are open for the third edition of the Design by Data Advanced Master® in Computational Design, Digital Manufacturing and Building Technologies opening in September 2018 in Paris.

The Bibliothèque nationale de France has given its architect Dominique Perrault ‘carte blanche’ to develop an exhibition dedicated to the building he designed in 1989 : with an original ‘mise en abyme’, a large-scale scenography presents the story of the conception and construction of the BnF, one of the most important contemporary public buildings in France.

+ 63

+ 11

+ 41

The 2018 BIM Competition asks applicants to reflect on the creation of a grammar school for 500 students in the city of Suresnes. Also, The Suresnes Open-Air School is located on this existing cluster block. Candidates should include a proposal for repurposing it.

A city’s monuments are integral parts of its metropolitan identity. They stand proud and tall and are often the subject of a few of your vacation photos. It is their form and design which makes them instantly recognizable, but what if their design had turned out differently?

Paris’ iconic and stunning Arc de Triomphe could have been a giant elephant, large enough to hold banquets and balls, and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. could have featured an impressive pyramid.

GoCompare has compiled and illustrated a series of rejected designs for monuments and placed them in a modern context to commemorate what could have been. Here are a few of our favorites:

The winners of the Architectural Review 2017 Emerging Architecture Award are Christelle Avenier and Miguel Cornejo. The duo’s social housing project in Paris was selected as winners by the judges. All finalists gathered in Berlin this year to present their projects to a panel consisting of Marina Tabassum, Martyn Hook, and Matthias Sauerbruch. For the last two-years, the jury has received the applications at the World Architecture Festival.

+ 4

French photographer Laurent Kronental’s latest photo series, “Les Yeux des Tours” views of Paris, are framed by the quirky windows of the Tours Aillaud, and by the subtle differences in which the spaces around them are inhabited. Kronental considers the towers as some of the most spectacular of the Grands Ensembles built in the post-war economic boom in France. For him, photographing these buildings was a form of nostalgia, a way of satisfying a deep sense of childhood wonder and curiosity that fostered in him as a young boy perceiving them from the nearby business and shopping center "La Défense," questioning the lives of the people who live there.

+ 14

+ 23

Videos

+ 34

+ 12

Dutch Firms Team RAU, SeARCH, and karres +brands have been named as one of the winners of the Inventons la Metropole de Grand Paris, the largest European competition for city planning, architecture and public space. Their project, Triango, reinvents Paris’ Triangle de Gonesse into a dynamic and lively business park which promotes sustainability in every sense of the word.

+ 9