PARIS TO GET NEW SKYSCRAPER AND A NEW ICON: PHARE TOWER

IHT:

Designed by Thom Mayne of the Los Angeles-based firm Morphosis, the Phare Tower will rise amid the office towers of La Defense, the western business district conceived in the late 1950s as a way of expanding the city while protecting its historic core from overdevelopment.

Embedded in this maze of generic towers and blank plazas, the tower will overlook the hollow cube of the 1989 Grande Arche and the elegantly arched concrete roof of the 1958 C.N.I.T. conference center. [The building's design was selected via a competition; this was the winning design.]

AND THIS:

Building regulations have kept tall buildings out of the city centre for decades but at 300 metres, the Lighthouse will come close to the Eiffel Tower, which is 324 metres high.

Due to be completed in 2012, it will cost an estimated $1.05bn. It will have a rectangular base with the tower capped by wind turbines. "It's about an icon, and one of the major buildings in Paris," Thom Mayne, the winning architect said. He added that the tower would be "a prototype for a green building" with a wind farm generating its own heating.

Some think it looks rather phallic; (read this LONDON TIMES weblog and check out the comments).

I think it looks like a woman in a burqa - which would be a fitting new icon for France and old Europe, as they slouch through dhimmitude toward islamification.

[NOTE: the building is also a paean to eco-nutsie ideology with its "wind farm". Not to mention that it's ENTIRELY a post-modern design. Sheesh: it represents nearly everything WRONG with France and the EUssr. Which is probably why it appealed so deeply to the judges and won.]