Modernist apartment

Located on the 14th floor, the flat boasts panoramic views over Paris. With its large windows, it combines brightness and calm. With a surface area of 82 m², this flat comprises a large living room, an open-plan kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom. It also has a cellar. The flat also benefits from a terrace on the 6th floor and a shared garden, so you can make the most of the outdoors.

This exceptional tower is located in the 13^e arrondissement, between Les Gobelins and Place d’Italie, in a peaceful area with a beautiful square and numerous schools.

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 m^² ceiling, painted by the artist Jacques Lagrange. It was designed to accommodate a footbridge leading to the Place d’Italie.

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.