The Phare Tower (Tour Phare), in
English, "Beacon Tower", was a planned approx. 300-metre (984 ft) tall
skyscraper with 71 floors designed as a
green building
Green building (also known as green construction or sustainable building) refers to both a structure and the application of processes that are environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout a building's life-cycle: from planni ...
to be built in
Courbevoie (
Hauts-de-Seine),
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
, in the
La Défense district of suburban
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...
. The building was being designed by
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
-based Morphosis, headed by architect
Thom Mayne
Thom Mayne (born January 19, 1944) is an American architect. He is based in Los Angeles. In 1972, Mayne helped found the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he is a trustee and the coordinator of the Design of Cities po ...
, and would have been completed in 2018. Had it been built, it would have been the tallest skyscraper in Paris and one of the tallest in the
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
. Tour Phare was cancelled and could be replaced by .
Name
While the French word ''phare'' means
lighthouse (from ''
Pharos'') when employed alone, it also applies to any source of light used as a beacon. In this context, ''phare'' is used to describe the tower as something that will bring attention. Tour Phare was meant to bring an architectural beacon to the periphery of Paris and more specifically
La Défense.
See also
*
List of tallest buildings and structures in the Paris region
Sources
Design Build Network: ''Le Phare''Treehugger: ''Thom Mayne to Build Big Eco-Tower in Paris''*
External links
Official Phare Tower article by Morphosis
References
La Défense
Proposed skyscrapers in France
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