Paris – Grande Arche de la Defense

Paris – Grande Arche de la Defense, originally uploaded by Matthew-1.

Always wanted to see this building.
It’s just outside the official city limits of Paris in La Defense, the so-called 21st Arrondisement.
This building continues the grand axis starting at the Louvre which also extends through the Arc de Triumph. The city now continues to grow beyond.
Its a bit of a sterile district with glassy “modern” office towers. Without any defining height or massing restrictions the many buildings here seem to sprout willy-nilly like weeds with crazy flowering tops rather than feeling like the trimmed hedges of Paris’ boulevard buildings. A little bit of Shanghai or Dubai in Paris.
This building is a grand ordering device for the district and connects it to the historical city. I particularly admired the “free-form” tensioned roof with glass and steel elevators in the void of the Arche, nicely offseting the pure geometry of the Arche itself.
A young man came to sit beside me to talk about sketching and showed me his own sketchbook. We had a friendly chat – and he had heard of urban sketchers.