Panoramic Apartment

The Albert Tower is located in a peaceful neighborhood of the 13th arrondissement, on the edge of the 5th arrondissement, facing the René Le Gall square. Between the Gobelins and Place d’Italie, it benefits from all nearby amenities and numerous educational institutions.

The metal structure of the Albert Tower forms a regular grid that contributes to the architectural expression of the façade. Composed of steel tube columns filled with concrete supporting a reinforced concrete slab and St. Andrew’s cross-shaped bracing, this structure combines lightness and transparency. On the 6th floor, a terrace designed for the enjoyment of the residents features a 600 m² ceiling painted by the artist Jacques Lagrange.

For this first “skyscraper” intended for housing, the architect attempted to integrate the high-rise building into the Parisian landscape and to use intelligent construction to serve a flexible plan. High-rise buildings, born in the United States at the end of the 19th century with metal structures, appeared only much later in France, where urban planning regulations did not allow them for a long time. The Albert Tower was widely published in the architectural press, which highlighted its construction method and aesthetics in the city.

Edouard Albert (1910-1968) graduated in architecture from the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1937. His career is marked by his research on materials, which allowed him to develop steel tube structures. These structures, known for their lightness, were part of a search for a link between technique, economy, and aesthetics. Edouard Albert was a professor and studio head at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1959 to 1968, a member of the commissions of the Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment, and the editorial board of the journal L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui.

In 1955, he built the first tubular structure building in Paris in the 17th arrondissement. He is also the architect of the Air France administrative building in Orly. In 1962, André Malraux entrusted him with the continuation of the Jussieu Faculty of Sciences project, for which he again used metal tubular architecture and associated artists to integrate contemporary art into the campus architecture.

In the 1960s, with Edouard Albert, architects conducted research on innovative metal structures, such as Jean Prouvé or Claude Parent, who built the House of Iran at the Cité Universitaire Internationale de Paris in 1969, a building suspended from a steel frame.