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Tour Sans Fins
The Tour Sans Fins (“Endless Tower”) was a tower planned in La Défense that has since been cancelled. The spelling ''Tour Sans Fins'' may, to a native French-speaker, sound like a grammatical mistake as it would normally be written ''Tour Sans Fin'' without the ‘s’ at the end of ''fins''. However, the idea was that this tower had no ends, even if one looked up or down at it, hence “ends” and not “end”. History The history of the Tour Sans Fins is linked to the early projects for La Défense. The Grande Arche was built in an area that was not yet developed. As a testimony to the lack of completed construction in La Défense, the winning design was selected next to an outdoor parking lot of the RER The winner of this contest was Jean Nouvel Jean Nouvel (; born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of ''Mars 1976'' and '' Syndicat de l'Architecture'', France’s first labor union fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Courbevoie
Courbevoie () is a commune located in the Hauts-de-Seine Department of the Île-de-France region of France. It is in the suburbs of the city of Paris, from the center of Paris. The centre of Courbevoie is situated from the city limits of Paris. La Défense, a business district hosting the tallest buildings in the metropolitan area, spreads over the southern part of Courbevoie (as well as parts of Puteaux and Nanterre). Name The name Courbevoie comes from Latin ''Curva Via'' and means "curved highway", allegedly in reference to a Roman road from Paris to Normandy that made a sharp turn to climb the hill over which Courbevoie was built. Administration Courbevoie is divided into two cantons: Canton of Courbevoie-1 and Canton of Courbevoie-2. History A wooden bridge was built crossing the Seine at Courbevoie by order of King Henry IV when in 1606 his royal coach fell into the river while being transported by ferry. Rebuilt in stone during the eighteenth century, thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris
Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the List of cities proper by population density, 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, Fashion capital, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called Caput Mundi#Paris, the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France Regions of France, region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel (; born 12 August 1945) is a French architect. Nouvel studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and was a founding member of ''Mars 1976'' and '' Syndicat de l'Architecture'', France’s first labor union for architects. He has obtained a number of prestigious distinctions over the course of his career, including the Aga Khan Award for Architecture (for the Institut du Monde Arabe which Nouvel designed), the Wolf Prize in Arts in 2005 and the Pritzker Prize in 2008. A number of museums and architectural centres have presented retrospectives of his work. Family and education Nouvel was born on 12 August 1945 in Fumel, France. He is the son of Renée and Roger Nouvel, who were teachers. When his father became the county's chief school superintendent, his family moved often. His parents encouraged Nouvel to study mathematics and language but when he was 16 years old he was captivated by art when a teacher taught him drawing. Although he later said he thought that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Défense
La Défense () is a major business district in France, located west of the city limits of Paris. It is part of the Paris metropolitan area in the Île-de-France region, located in the department of Hauts-de-Seine in the communes of Courbevoie, La Garenne-Colombes, Nanterre, and Puteaux. La Défense is Europe's largest purpose-built business district, covering , for 180,000 daily workers, with 72 glass and steel buildings (of which 19 are completed skyscrapers), and of office space. Around its Grande Arche and esplanade ("le Parvis"), La Défense contains many of the Paris urban area's tallest high-rises. Les Quatre Temps, a large shopping mall in La Défense, has 220 stores, 48 restaurants and a 24-screen movie theatre. The district is located at the westernmost extremity of the '' Axe historique'' ("historical axis") of Paris, which starts at the Louvre in Central Paris and continues along the Champs-Élysées, well beyond the Arc de Triomphe along the Avenue de ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grande Arche
La Grande Arche de la Défense (; "The Great Arch of the Defense"), originally called La Grande Arche de la Fraternité (; "Fraternity"), is a monument and building in the business district of La Défense and in the commune of Puteaux, to the west of Paris, France. It is usually known as the Arche de la Défense or simply as La Grande Arche. A cube, La Grande Arche is part of the perspective from the Louvre to Arc de Triomphe, and was one of the Grands Projets of François Mitterrand. The distance from La Grande Arche to Arc de Triomphe is . Design and construction A great national design competition was launched in 1982 as the initiative of French president François Mitterrand. Danish architect Johan Otto von Spreckelsen (1929–1987) and Danish engineer Erik Reitzel (1941–2012) designed the winning entry to be a late-20th-century version of the Arc de Triomphe: a monument to humanity and humanitarian ideals rather than military victories. The construction of the monument ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Réseau Express Régional
The Réseau Express Régional ( en, Regional Express Network), commonly abbreviated RER (), is a hybrid commuter rail and rapid transit system serving Paris and its suburbs. It acts as a combined city-centre underground rail system and suburbs-to-city-centre commuter rail. In the city centre it acts much like the Paris Métro, though faster, having fewer stops. This has made it a model for proposals to improve transit within other cities. The network consists of five lines: A, B, C, D and E. The network has 257 stations and has interchanges with the Métro and commuter rail within the City of Paris and the suburbs. The lines are identified by letters to avoid confusion with the Métro lines, which are identified by numbers. The network is still expanding: RER E, which opened in 1999, is planned for westward extension toward La Défense and Mantes-la-Jolie in two phases by 2024–2026. Characteristics The RER contains 257 stations, 33 of which are within the city of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Early 1990s Recession
The early 1990s recession describes the period of economic downturn affecting much of the Western world in the early 1990s. The impacts of the recession contributed in part to the 1992 U.S. presidential election victory of Bill Clinton over incumbent president George H. W. Bush. The recession also included the resignation of Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney, the reduction of active companies by 15% and unemployment up to nearly 20% in Finland, civil disturbances in the United Kingdom and the growth of discount stores in the United States and beyond. Primary factors believed to have led to the recession include the following: restrictive monetary policy enacted by central banks, primarily in response to inflation concerns, the loss of consumer and business confidence as a result of the 1990 oil price shock, the end of the Cold War and the subsequent decrease in defense spending, the savings and loan crisis and a slump in office construction resulting from overbuilding du ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
