L’ Arbre Blanc Housing Tower in Montpellier
- Frank Kaltenbach
"A 21st-century folly" might be an appropriate name for a modern structure with a fantastic appearance - fun to look at and causing a sensation. That's what the city of Montpellier and a group investors wanted when they invited architects to participate in the international design competition for a housing tower with 113 dwellings. Experimental building culture is held high here. Since 1989, Ricardo Bofill's postmodern residential Antigone development - a baroque palace of urban proportions for Everyman - has stood within viewing distance of the present site. Here, too, over the past decade, Massimiliano Fuksas has erected an organically styled school of hotel management with a gleaming, silvery metal skin, Zaha Hadid has designed the Pierres Vives building with its aerodynamic exposed-concrete elements, and Jean Nouvel has created the new city hall enclosed in a skin of coloured glass.
