FRANKLIN AZZI ARCHITECTURE . CHARTIER DALIX ARCHITECTES . HARDEL ET LE BIHAN ARCHITECTES . renders: © luxigon
Nouvelle AOM wins international architectural competition to redesign Montparnasse Tower in Paris
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Nouvelle AOM has been announced the winner of the Tour Montparnasse architectural competition, opening a fresh new chapter in the history of the tower.
Launched in June 2016, the competition challenged bidders to create a powerful, dynamic and bold new identity for the Tour Montparnasse, while fully addressing all the challenges of the modern world regarding user accessibility, comfort and energy performance.
Nouvelle Agence pour l’Opération Maine-‐Montparnasse (nAOM – nouvelle AOM) is a consortium of three Paris-‐based firms that brings together a young generation of architects all born in the 1970s: Franklin Azzi, Fréderic Chartier, Pascale Dalix, Mathurin Hardel and Cyrille.
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OMA’s entry
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MAD’s entry ‘Mirage’
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After its completion in 1973, the 210 meter-high Montparnasse Tower became the tallest building in Paris. But through the years, there has been constant criticism over its intrusive existence in the city, that it has been coined the ‘scar of Paris’. In 2016, the owner called an international competition to renovate the tower, and MAD was one of seven short-listed firms out of more than 700 teams to participate.
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MAD’s design uses concave principles to create an optical illusion by setting every glass panel of the façade to a specific angle, so that the building itself turns into a city-scale concave mirror. The streets and rooftops of the neighboring buildings appear as if they are hanging in the sky; while the sky is mirrored onto the lower section of the building, blending into the atmosphere. The design creates a mirage of Paris, but upside-down, as if it is floating in the air.
And, Paris’ other city landmark, the Eiffel Tower, will also appear upside down when looking at Montparnasse Tower from that direction.
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Studio Gang’ entry
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A new, faceted facade gives the Tower a shimmering silhouette that marks its presence in the Parisian landscape from wherever it’s seen. Like the historic Haussmann-era buildings of the quartier Montparnasse, each level of the Tower adopts a human scale, while at the scale of the city, the building inscribes itself with a generous monumentality._
The design’s intrinsic beauty goes beyond its exterior appearance to offer renewed functionality and program, as well as far greater environmental performance. A diverse combination of uses and services make the tower a powerful economic engine and lively gathering place. Its transparent base serves as an inviting front door for its many offerings, which include 50 floors of work space, a spectacular observatory with indoor garden, restaurants with terraces, a hotel, cafés, a co-working hub, retail, a gym, and conference center.
The tower’s redesigned plaza works with the base to blur the boundaries between inside and outside, offering a much-improved experience and new amenities. Its topographic section with cascading gardens brings light and greenery to the building and its surroundings while maintaining an urban flexibility that accommodates everyday public activity, open-air markets, and large events. The plaza and base also incorporate a new urban mobility hub that connects different modes of transit. This asset is one of the project’s integrated sustainable features—which also include a high-performance facade, wind-derived shape, and green infrastructure systems—that together achieve a notable level of environmental performance commensurate with Paris’s leading role in the global battle against climate change.
Inside the new tower, the faceted facade’s bay windows produce generous, flexible work spaces and exciting social spaces that are filled with natural daylight and open up expansive vistas of Paris. At its top, the building culminates in an extraordinary glass pavilion that offers 360-degree views of the city. Supported by a steel corolla structure, it houses a lush garden that gives a taste of the French terroir, as well as a théâtre de verdure that can accommodate a range of special events, live performances, and celebrations. This airy space where people, nature, and culture mix is designed to be an ideal belvédère from which to watch Paris’s bright future unfold.
