Among first-world capital cities, Paris is fairly unique in its rejection of skycrapers; to date, there’s only one, the Tour Montparnasse, in the centre of the city. And thanks to a politically tense vote yesterday, things are set to stay that way.
The ‘Triangle Tower’ was a proposed Herzog & de Meuron project that would have stood 180m tall, housed around 5000 workers, and been the city’s first skyscraper in 42 years. But the political parties that control Paris’s local council rejected the law change that would have allowed the tower to be built. Despite the Socialist mayor calling a secret ballot earlier in the night, some Green and centre-right UDP councillors held their ‘no’ votes up for everyone to see.
The outcome was a 83-78 rejection of the proposal to remove the height restriction that currently applies across the city, and as such the plans for the ‘Triangle Tower’ are in a fairly sticky situation. With the mayor determined to hold another vote, however, Paris’s 18th century layout might not be safe forever. [ArchDaily, BBC]