Project
“More than a century after the inauguration of the Eiffel Tower, an ultramodern version of the Iron Lady will soon see the light of day at La Défense. As its big sister, a Lighthouse tower will peak at 300m high and its lights will shine same as her on Paris and its inner suburbs ” Le Parisien newspaper, 11/28/2006)
Following an international competition organized by Unibail, Thom Mayne and his agency mOrphosis were awarded prizes to carry out a project which caught the eye of all French people, including the President of the Republic.
“Your project of” Lighthouse Tower”, dear Tom Mayne, is unanimous from my point of view, by its aesthetic beauty and by its perfect integration into this forest of high rise buildings that is the district of La Défense (…)” Nicolas Sarkozy, 09/17/2007
The project includes an atrium on several floors, an extension of the tower above the railway tracks, the “mid-rise building” and two annex buildings: the trapezium and a liaison pavilion with the CNIT. The supporting structure is made up of a concrete core and a metal structure made of diagonals on the facade.
Services
The difficulty of this project was its slenderness (15m core, 300m high), the complexity of the geometry, and the size of the site, located between the SNCF station and a ringroad (Boulevard Circulaire) spanning over a pedestrian bridge.
setec tpi was in charge of the complete structural project management, including:
- Structural design of the tower, preliminary design studies,
- Business consultation documents,
- Monitoring of works and control of execution plans.
Key information
Client: Unibail Rodamco Westfield
Project Management Consortium: mOrphosis, setec tpi (MOE structures)
Duration:
- 2006 – 2008: studies
- 2008 – 2012: construction