Tour Montparnasse

The new Tower, seen from the Rue de Rennes // La nouvelle Tour, depuis la rue de Rennes.

Location
Paris, France

Status
Design completed 2017

Client
L’Ensemble Immobilier Tour Maine-Montparnasse (EITMM)

Type
Civic, Office

Size
1,600,000 sf

Sustainability
Targeting HQE Exceptionnel, BREEAM Excellent, LEED Gold, Well GOLD

Tags

Developed for the international competition to redesign Tour Montparnasse, Studio Gang’s design transforms this monolithic skyscraper into a beautiful new landmark for twenty-first-century Paris—a tower that is simultaneously a dynamic hub for economic innovation, a vibrant center of community life, and a global model of sustainability.

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 fifty 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.

Film by Neoscape

Known for its creativity, the Montparnasse neighborhood enjoys an energetic dialogue with the new tower via le boulevard Edgar-Quinet. // Le quartier Montparnasse, bien connu pour sa créativité, renoue avec la Tour un dialogue riche et vivant, ici depuis le boulevard Edgar-Quinet.

A series of biodiverse gardens provides an enchanting tableau that changes with the seasons and creates a focal point for the Tower’s lower floors. // Dans la succession de jardins et d’espaces verts, la variété des espèces compose un tableau enchanteur, qui évolue au fil des saisons et crée un point focal pour les étages inférieurs de la Tour.

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.

Blurring the boundary between indoors and outdoors, the transparent office lobby brings the best of the city’s urban energy inside. // Estompant par sa transparence les limites entre l’intérieur et l’extérieur, le lobby des étages de bureaux laisse entrer dans la Tour le meilleur de l’énergie urbaine.

Directly accessible from the plaza, the Observatory visitor center marks the beginning of a dynamic, exciting journey to the Tower’s top. // Accessible directement depuis l’esplanade, le centre d’accueil des visiteurs marque le début d’une scénographie dynamique et stimulante.

The employee restaurant extends into large terraces that overlook the plaza’s green roofs and gardens. // Le restaurant inter entreprises, en contact directe avec l’extérieur, se prolonge par de grandes terrasses qui donnent sur les toitures végétalisées et les jardins de l’esplanade.

The co-working hub offers start-ups, entrepreneurs, and independent workers a dynamic and innovative environment for new ways of working. // Le pôle de coworking offre aux startups, aux entrepreneurs et aux indépendants un environnement de travail dynamique et innovant, pour de nouvelles façons de travailler.

The bay windows extend the facade to expand the space on each floor, generously allowing in natural light and opening up panoramic perspectives. // Les baies vitrées en dièdre s’avancent en façade pour magnifier l’espace à chaque étage, laissant généreusement entrer la lumière naturelle, touten ouvrant largement les perspectives sur le panorama.

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.

The Observatory’s terraces and restaurant offer visitors an unforgettable experience of the Parisian atmosphere. // Les terrasses de l’Observatoire et du restaurant offrent aux visiteurs la possibilité de vivre une expérience inoubliable, très haut dans le ciel de Paris.

Perched high above the city, the théâtre de verdure provides a lively gathering place beneath a canopy of trees and structural corolla. // Suspendu très haut au-dessus de la ville, sous une canopée arborée, le théâtre de verdure est un lieu de convivialité animé, surmonté de la structure en corolle.

The lighting design elegantly emphasizes the Tower’s visual identity. // La scénographie des effets lumineux vient souligner avec élégance l’identité visuelle de la Tour.

Consultant Team

Chabanne et Partenaires, local architect

Terrell Group, structural and facade engineer

Hugh Dutton Associés (HDA), facade engineer

Thornton Tomasetti, structural engineer

Peter Heppel Associates, wind engineer

Rowan Williams Davies and Irwin (RWDI), wind tunnel engineer

Elithis, MEP engineer and sustainability consultant

Vincent Pourtau Economie et Associés (VPEAS), cost estimating

Licht Kunst Licht AG, lighting designer

Office of Landscape Morphology (OLM Paysagistes), landscape architect

Casso et Associés, fire protection

Argénium, asbestos consultant

Cabinet Lamoureux, acoustics consultant

MovvéO Limited, elevator consultant

Transsolar, facade and sustainability peer review

Awards

Winner, Glass Future Prize, World Architecture Festival, 2018

Finalist, Competition Designs category, World Architecture Festival, 2018

Related

Now

ArchDaily — “OMA, MAD Among 7 Architects Selected in Competition to Redesign Tour Montparnasse”

“The Ensemble Immobilier Tour Maine-Montparnasse (EITMM) has selected 7 notable firms to continue to the second round in a competition for the renovation of Tour Montparnasse in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France.” 

The shortlist includes several French firms, as well as OMA, MAD, and Studio Gang.

Now

Tour Montparnasse Wins Glass Future Prize World Architecture Festival

Tour Montparnasse was awarded the new prize which recognizes a future project that points to  new ways in which glass and glass technology can be deployed.