Paris: The Latest Architecture and News

C'est officiel : on peut se baigner en eau vive à #Paris ! Venez vous jeter à l'eau à #ParisPlages #LaVillette! @FrancoisDagnaud @jfmartins pic.twitter.com/bv4B4gw6Qc

— Anne Hidalgo (@Anne_Hidalgo) 18 de julho de 2017

On July 15, the city of Paris announced the opening of three natural swimming pools that receive their water supply from the Seine River, located in the La Villette Basin in the 19th arrondissement of the city. Spanning a total of 1,600 square meters, the new attraction is divided into a children's area, with depths of up to 40cm; an area of medium depth of 1,2m; and a larger pool, with depths of about two meters.

The swimming pools are part of the "Swimming in Paris" project, presented for the first time by the City Council of The French Capital in June 2015, with the goal of "encouraging the practice of swimming for Parisians and Tourists." According to an official statement from the city government, the project aims to allow, by 2020, the "modernization of water parks and the creation of new swimming pools and areas for bathing."

For Hamburg-based photographer Sebastian Weiss, buildings are dramatis personae, or "characters". Inspired by Ash Amin and Stephen Graham's 1997 book The Ordinary City, in which the authors described the city as the "theater of life", this photo-essay of architectural landmarks in the French cities of Arcueil, Nanterre, and Paris examines the personalities of public buildings.

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Studio Gang and nAOM (Franklin Azzi Architecture / Chartier Dalix / Hardel-Lebihan Architectes) have been selected as the two finalist teams competing for the redesign of Paris’ infamous Tour Montparnasse, beating out a star-studded shortlist that included OMA, MAD Architects (China) + DGLA (France), Architecture Studio, Dominique Perrault Architecture, and PLP Architecture.

The competition asked teams to submit a vision for the tower that “not only creates a powerful, dynamic and bold new identity for the Tour Montparnasse but also addresses all the challenges involved in terms of user accessibility, comfort and energy performance.”

Architect and theorist Yona Friedman has brought his playful “People’s Architecture” installations to Rome’s MAXXI Museum, Paris’s Les Halles and Denmark where they were recently assembled in a workshop at the Danish Association for Architects. Built using plastic hula hoops, each installation is assembled spontaneously, creating new variations of space with each turn. Says Friedman: “Architecture for people proposes a variant of the original “Ville Spatial.” It is based on a structure easy to modify, a structure not necessarily raised over ground level, keeping that option open if wanted.”

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Scattered throughout the streets of Paris, the elegant Art Nouveau entrances to the Métropolitain (Métro) subway system stand as a collective monument to the city’s Belle Époque of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. With their sinuous ironwork patterned after stylized plants, the Métro entrances now count among the most celebrated architectural emblems of the city; however, due to the city’s wariness in the face of industrialization and architect Hector Guimard’s decision to utilize a then-novel architectural aesthetic, it would take decades before the entrances would earn the illustrious reputation that they now enjoy.

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SO-IL and Laisné Roussel architects have been selected as the winners of an international competition to design a new masterplan for Place Mazas in Paris. Titled L’Atelier de l’Arsenal, the proposal seeks to integrate the historic fabric of the site into a new, flexible urban strategy organized around a variety of new buildings and public spaces.

Paris and Los Angeles will become the next Olympic host cities, after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted unanimously to approve a plan simultaneously awarding the 2024 and 2028 Olympic Games to the competing cities.

Which city will host each year, however, is still on the table – the two bid cities and the IOC will have until a September 13 conference in Lima to reach an agreement. If they cannot agree, solely the 2024 Olympics will be awarded, though this outcome seems unlikely after recent collaborations by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.

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Renowned art collector François Pinault has revealed plans for a “completely circular museum” that will be located within a 19th century, domed structure that once housed the Parisian Stock Exchange. To accomplish this, Pinault has enlisted the services of Pritzker Prize-winning architect Tadao Ando, whose design calls for the construction of a giant concrete cylinder located directly below the building’s soaring rotunda.

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