Tuesday, November 28, 2006

A wind-powered skyscraper in Paris



PARIS — Developers have selected a design by an award-winning American architect for a bold new building nearly as tall as the Eiffel Tower — and powered partly by the wind.

Dubbed the Lighthouse, the 984-foot-high skyscraper will be designed by Pritzker Prize winner Thom Mayne and erected at La Defense, a complex of office towers in a business district west of Paris where many of France’s major corporations are headquartered.

The Unibail development company announced Monday that Mayne, who works for Santa Monica, Calif.-based firm Morphosis, had bested nine other architects to win the bid. His design shows a building curving asymmetrically upward, topped by a crown of spiky antennae.

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