How This Skyscraper Ruined Paris, and Why They’re Now Trying to Make It Invisible

The play­wright Tris­tan Bernard is said to have eat­en lunch at the Eif­fel Tow­er every day, but not because he liked the menu in its café: rather, because it was the only place in Paris with no view of the Eif­fel Tow­er. His view wasn’t whol­ly eccen­tric in the decades after its con­struc­tion, in the late eigh­teen-eight­ies, when the struc­ture had yet to become the most beloved in France, and per­haps in the world. Yet not far behind the Eif­fel Tow­er as a must-vis­it tourist attrac­tion in a town full of them is Paris’ least beloved build­ing: the Tour Mont­par­nasse, which since its com­ple­tion in 1973 has stood in infamy as the only sky­scraper in the cen­ter of the city.

Unlike the Eif­fel Tow­er, which was com­mis­sioned in part to cel­e­brate the cen­ten­ni­al of the French Rev­o­lu­tion, the Tour Mont­par­nasse projects no polit­i­cal sym­bol­ism; unlike Notre-Dame de Paris, or Sacré-Cœur de Mont­martre, it has no reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance. Its pur­pose is whol­ly com­mer­cial, befit­ting a large office build­ing with a shop­ping mall — or now, the remains of a shop­ping mall — at the bot­tom. But when it was first con­ceived in 1958, it embod­ied the very image of moder­ni­ty in a built envi­ron­ment that was dilap­i­dat­ed where it wasn’t war-torn. A mod­ern sky­scraper would show the world, unmis­tak­ably, that Paris had stepped ful­ly into the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry of indoor plumb­ing, elec­tric­i­ty, fast trains, and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion.

This mis­sion gained the full back­ing of none oth­er than Andre Mal­raux, then France’s first Min­is­ter of Cul­tur­al Affairs. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, nine­teen-fifties Europe lacked the tech­nol­o­gy, exper­tise, and mon­ey required for a 60-sto­ry sky­scraper, let alone one serv­ing as the cen­ter­piece of a sweep­ing rede­vel­op­ment project that includ­ed gleam­ing new res­i­den­tial blocks and a com­plete­ly rebuilt Mont­par­nasse Sta­tion. The tow­er could­n’t even break ground until 1969, by which time the build­ing’s once-cut­ting-edge mid-cen­tu­ry design — hard­ly a uni­ver­sal hit even in maque­tte form — had already begun to look passé. (Part of the prob­lem was sure­ly its col­or, which archi­tect Philippe Tré­ti­ack described as hav­ing “a touch of the nico­tine stain about it.”)

When the Tour Mont­par­nasse turned 50 a few years ago, I hap­pened to be in Paris on my hon­ey­moon. Noth­ing was hap­pen­ing to mark the occa­sion, apart from the long-ongo­ing dis­cus­sions about whether to ren­o­vate the thing or just knock it down. The for­mer option hav­ing won the day, you can see the details of the planned extreme makeover in the B1M video above. Rather than destroy­ing the exist­ing build­ing, the idea is to do the next best thing and make it invis­i­ble. This ambi­tious project will install a new façade of clear glass and bands of sky gar­dens, among oth­er changes, in order to light­en its bur­den­some visu­al mass. But how­ev­er rad­i­cal its trans­for­ma­tion, one sus­pects that it will remain most appre­ci­at­ed as the only place in Paris with­out a view of the Tour Mont­par­nasse.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Paris Became Paris: The Sto­ry Behind Its Icon­ic Squares, Bridges, Mon­u­ments & Boule­vards

Watch the Build­ing of the Eif­fel Tow­er in Time­lapse Ani­ma­tion

The Archi­tec­tur­al His­to­ry of the Lou­vre: 800 Years in Three Min­utes

The Cre­ation & Restora­tion of Notre-Dame Cathe­dral, Ani­mat­ed

Why Europe Has So Few Sky­scrap­ers

Why Do Peo­ple Hate Mod­ern Archi­tec­ture?: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.