Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
warehouse of Les Frigos (now a colourful artists' community), and an old factory complete
with smokestack (a new architecture school).
If it ever gets off the ground, the sustainable 297m-tall Tour Phare (Lighthouse Tower;
www.tour-phare.com
)
at La Défense will torque like a human torso and, through awnings
that are raised and lowered when the sun hits them, use light as a building material. Plans
are for it to be completed in 2017.
Recent Renaissance
An utterly fabulous development is the recent renaissance of some of Paris' loveliest art
deco buildings: in 2014 the luxury McGallery arm of the Accor hotel group opened a five-
star hotel and spa in the mythical Molitor swimming pool complex in western Paris, where
the bikini made its first appearance in the 1930s. In Le Marais, thermal-baths-turned-1980s-
nightclub Les Bain Douches - another mythical address - opened as luxury hotel Les Bains
after years of being abandoned. Preserving as many of the original art deco features as pos-
sible was a characteristic of both projects.
Drawing on the city's longstanding tradition of glass in its architecture - there is no more
beautiful example than the art nouveau Grand Palais, one of the Paris skyline's most recog-
nisable landmarks thanks to the gargantuan glass dome that tops it - Canadian architect
Frank Gehry used 12 enormous glass 'sails' to design the extraordinary Fondation Louis
Vuitton pour la Création, which opened in the Bois de Boulogne in late 2014. Glass is like-
wise a big feature of the 1970s-eyesore-turned-contemporary-stunner Forum des Halles
shopping centre in the 1er - a curvaceous, curvilinear and glass-topped construction by ar-
chitects Patrick Berger and Jacques Anziutti, to be completed in 2016.
A signature architectural feature of Paris is the vertical garden, or mur végétal(vegetation
wall). Seeming to defy gravity, these gardens clad walls in chic boutique interiors, outside
museums, within spas and elsewhere. The Seine-facing garden at the Musée du Quai
Branly, by Patrick Blanc, is Paris' most famous.
