La Defense and the Future of Grand Urban Plazas

On Wednesday, May 2, the Wall Street Journal posted an article about the business center of Paris, yes there is one for those visitors who have not gone over the hill and down from the Arc de Triomphe (GO HERE). This business complex called La Defense, sits on the city’s western edge and includes a collection of glass enclosed uber-buildings that flank its grand plaza. As stated in Wikipedia, it is where “statements of corporate ambition can be made,” hyperbole intended. It might sound better in French.

Central Plaza

This complex is now faced with three new towers that will dramatically affect the view, as well as the perception, of Paris; even the proposers are worried about how their clients and customers will see their attempts at make a signature statement about who they are in this historic city. And the residents of Paris are taking to the battlements to ensure that they will be heard. It’s all so Parisian.

I was never a fan of this urban complex. It is over blown and has none of the charm of the rest of the city just over the hill. It is about 400 acres with 3.5 million SF of office space, more than 150,000 employees and 20,000 permanent residents. There is retail (of some kind), hotels, and smatterings of monuments and sculpture. What really takes the visitor’s breath away is the central plaza, all 3.3 million square feet of flagstone and sidewalks. These huge plates of stone laid in an undulating grid pattern, when I was there, rocked and tilted as you walked the plaza, quite unsettling I assure you.

La Grande Arche (finished in 1989 and a homage to the original Arc de Triomphe), is the central structure and in line with the Champs-Elysees. The arch has a grand stair under its arch that at most times, has hundreds of people sitting about, many, I’m sure, trying to understand the space. Under this massive structure are rail links and metro stations; just remember that the Louvre is just a few Metro stops away. It contains government offices.

I’ve used some images from Wikipedia and other sources, my photos are slides (shows you my tech at the time I was there, lost the images from the second visit – apologies). The contrasts are spectacularly unreal, walk through Tuileries, grab a seat on the Metro, and then rise into La Defense, you would think you not only changed centuries but planets as well.

The New Towers are on the 'Photoshopped' Right

Successful urban plazas are difficult at best, time may heal them or perspectives and scales change as buildings grow and tastes alter. The biggest challenge is economics and approvals. Either can kill the effort. These new buildings, the Phare Tower with 70 floors and the Hermitage Plaza Towers (2 and Russian backed) at 86 floors (and a tad shorter than the Eiffel Tower), will be some of the tallest buildings in Europe. The need to build taller is worldwide, so just get on the band wagon and go for it.

Stay Tuned . . . .

I Finally Changed My Desktop – A Mini-vacation

This week I changed my desktop picture (for all of you who have been staring, for years, at the island with the palm tree or that green Teletubbie hillside, go to your control panel and change the screen – now!), from a pleasant garden in Saint Andrews, Scotland to a beach in Amalfi, Italy. From the bucolic to the chaotic. Each area of the beach serves a particular hotel so the umbrellas change color, there are low fences and other demarcations to establish turf boundaries (really beach boundaries), my guess this hasn’t changes since the Romans and other Italians used this coast as a resort from the intense summer heat. The mountains drive themselves deep into the Mediterranean, barely a shingle at their edge; these small beaches are fought over, towel and tan.

From this garden in St. Andrews, Scotland

to this beach in Amalfi, Italy

The more interesting part of this image is how these homes, apartments, hotels and all other manner of buildings climb on each other’s backs up the slopes. The terraces above the houses are buttressed and walled to support olives and grapes (two of the greatest commercial gifts of the Italians, beyond Virna Lisi and Ferrari), so every inch must be used. Great trellis structures support the vines further up the canyon, lemon trees are everywhere for limoncello (a wonderful beverage only an Italian would think of), magenta bougainvillea wrap the rocks where nothing else can grow.

Density, dear old density. We Americans love to call for density for any number of reasons: save farmland, save utility costs, save transit, save money, save ourselves, and while we’re at it, save the planet. Current urban densities call for densities of at least fifteen units to the acre, and in cities like Chicago and San Francisco, sometimes more than one hundred units to the acre. But they don’t look like Amalfi and Positano. 

Positano, Italy

Maybe it’s the romantic in me, but fifty stories of steel and glass, while interesting, just doesn’t get the heart a fluttering as much as a perched vineyard and stucco home overlooking the Med. We continue to borrow the textures and colors of these regions for our architecture. The Italian piazzas still influence our planning decisions; who doesn’t want a nice little Starbucks on a plaza and fountain in their new project? But the difficulty is the issue of authenticism. I’m sure Walt Disney didn’t stay up nights worrying about his Cinderella castle and how it might have been confused with the Bavarian digs of Ludwig II, Neuschwanstein Castle. And I know, for a fact, the various faux Tuscan designs of the current spate of residential architects remind me more of low fat yogurt than a rich carbonara, oozing with cream, cheese and pancetta (but I digress, but it did give me an idea for dinner).

During the next ten years we’re going to have an opportunity to drive new concepts in housing and residential architecture. New types of dense urban housing ideas will be thrown out for the consumer to rent or buy. A lot of money will be spent, and sadly the failures will not get the treatment they should get or deserve.

It is my hope that there will be a real sense of romance and richness brought back into our new communities. Texture, color, authentic stone, bold colors, and vibrant streets need to be re-remembered and made real. Everyone should find a plaza to visit in their own town that welcomes, like Aix-en-Provence.

Aix-en-Provence, France in a gentle afternoon

Stay tuned . . . .