Description
Paris’ first “skyscraper” for residential use
This tower, built by Edouard Albert in 1960, is an icon of modern architecture in France. Renowned for both its aesthetics and its intelligent construction – a tubular metal structure developed by Edouard Albert – it is listed on the Supplementary Inventory of Historic Monuments.
On the 8th floor, this absolutely quiet flat spans a surface area of 103 m². It comprises a large living room with two linked rooms for mixed use (office, anteroom or extension to the living room), a kitchen, a TV area, two bedrooms and two bathrooms.
This exceptional tower is located in the 13e arrondissement, between Les Gobelins and Place d’Italie, in a peaceful area with a beautiful square and numerous schools.
Generous, spacious living areas
The flat is unusual in that it has been given a contemporary makeover by architects Loïc Richalet and Alain Salomon, who, while enhancing the qualities of Edouard Albert’s building, have created an open, friendly space with intimate sleeping areas.
The space has been stripped of all partitions – most of the load-bearing points are on the outside of the facade – and completely reinvented thanks to a partition-library unit that runs parallel to the facade right from the entrance. Housing the kitchen, a TV area and a bookcase on the living room side, this wooden bookcase, with built-in storage and light fittings, structures and frees up the living room completely.
The living room is bathed in light, with an all-glass façade measuring more than 15 metres. It offers breathtaking views of Paris and its finest monuments – the Eiffel Tower, the Sacré Coeur, the domes of the Val-de-Grâce and the Panthéon – and stunning sunsets all year round.
On the exterior, the tower’s metal structure forms a regular grid that contributes to the architectural expression of the façade. Composed of tubular steel columns filled with concrete on which rests a reinforced concrete slab and cross bracing, this structure combines lightness and transparency.
On the 6th floor, a terrace designed for the enjoyment of residents features a 600 m² ceiling, painted by the artist Jacques Lagrange. It was designed to accommodate a footbridge leading to the Place d’Italie.
Edouard Albert
Edouard Albert (1910-1968) graduated in architecture from the Ecole nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris in 1937. His career was marked by his research into materials, which enabled him to develop tubular steel structures. These extremely light structures were part of a search for a link between technique, economy and aesthetics. Édouard Albert was studio head teacher at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1959 to 1968, and a member of the commissions of the Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment and of the editorial board of the journal L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui.
In 1955, he built the first building with a tubular structure in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. He also designed the Air France administrative building at Orly. In 1962, André Malraux asked him to take over the project for the Jussieu Faculty of Science, for which he once again used metal tubular architecture, and worked with artists to integrate contemporary art into the architecture of the campus.
For this first “skyscraper” for residential use, the architect attempted to integrate the high-rise building into the Parisian landscape and to use constructive intelligence in the service of a flexible plan. High-rise buildings, which originated in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century with metal structures, only appeared belatedly in France, where town planning regulations did not allow them for a long time.
In the 1960s, with Edouard Albert, architects such as Jean Prouvé and Claude Parent carried out research into innovative metal structures. In 1969, they built the Maison de l’Iran at the Cité Universitaire Internationale in Paris, a building suspended from a steel framework.
The 13th arrondissement was often a testing ground for 20th century architects. Auguste Perret built the national furniture repository in the Gobelins district, while from the 1960s onwards, a number of high-rise buildings sprang up in the arrondissement, such as the Centre Pierre Mendès France (Université Paris 1) designed by Michel Andrault and Pierre Parat in 1973, the Olympiades district and the François Mitterrand French National Library built by Dominique Perrault between 1989 and 1995.
The Albert Tower has been widely published in the architectural press, which has highlighted its construction and its aesthetic appeal in the city.