JACQUES BRAVO

 

STUNNING MODERNITY IN THE BEAUGRENELLE DISTRICT

The "village" of Beaugrenelle was created in June 1824, at a time which saw enormous progress, industry, technological advances, and echoed such famous names as Javel, Eiffel and Citroën.

Closer to home, the Front de Seine district was known as a testing ground for visionary architecture in the 1970s, with the construction of more than ten towers: Keller, Evasion, Mercure, Mars, Totem, Niko (today Novotel), ...; the latest being the Cristal tower (1990). Symbol of modernity, Beaugrenelle was at the time compared to a small New York and praised for its architecture and the great names associated with it: Le Corbusier, Michel Andrault, Pierre Parat ... Turned to the West and the progress that 'it symbolizes, it is today a media district and is located at the crossroads of the Pont de Grenelle, the left bank of the Seine, the three-lane expressway that runs along the river, RER lines ... history makes it a privileged place of creation, discovery and exchange.

The Front de Seine now includes around twenty towers reaching nearly 100 m in height, built all around a raised espalanade. This esplanade is paved with frescoes that are only visible from the high floors of the towers. Unlike Italy 13, the design of the towers is much more varied. The Hotel Novotel Paris-Tour Eiffel (formerly known as Hotel Nikkō), for example, has windows circled in red, while the Totem Tower is made up of a stack of several glass blocks.

Born from a reflection of more than 10 years, Beaugrenelle participates in an overall urban regeneration of the Front de Seine district on the Left Bank. It offers a latest generation approach to leisure trade which makes it a unique destination. In order to create movement, the architects designed ribbon-shaped facades, without angles, in order to make the perspective fluid, like the curves of the nearby Seine. They also chose to create a space that opens onto the district and the Seine, thus breaking with its initial closed structure and replacing it with three islands connected by footbridges. This movement of anjd flows will allow the commercial space to be connected to the city in a harmonious way.

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