Phare Tower in Paris by Morphosis

Mayne's project for the tallest office building in Paris was selected on December 1, 2006 (other competitors included H&deM, OMA, and Nouvel). The elegantly visible silhouette wrapped in a translucent shell is a far cry from the sharp corners, violent eruptions, and fragmentary forms we have been accustomed to from him. The tower is expected to rise on the same plot where Jean Nouvel planned his Tour sans Fins seventeen years ago.
The sixty-two-year-old architect said in an interview with The New York Times: “I showed my softer side; my wife really teases me about it. The sensuality of Paris has found its way into the project.” He likes to compare the Phare Tower to “layered clothing” or a women’s bodice. “The skin has become primary, and the body secondary. The tower has become metabolized, skin… I create something, I attack it, it moves, changes, responds to the nature of criticism. This happens repeatedly until we exhaust the idea. Then it is finished, done. I am not finished. I have just begun.”
The project is to be a pinnacle re-evaluating the entire La Défense, a coolly received office district on the western edge of Paris. Mayne's environmentally friendly tower behaves organically from its base, gently leaning and disappearing at the top into delicate fragments that will serve as a wind turbine.
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