The construction of a 42-floor, pyramid-shaped skyscraper began in Paris on Thursday despite local opposition and objections from environmentalists who have called the project “catastrophic”, reports The Guardian.
The Triangle Tower (Tour Triangle) will, at 180 metres (590ft), become the city’s third-highest building after the Eiffel Tower, completed in 1889, and the Montparnasse Tower, which opened in 1973.
High-rise additions are rare in the inner-city limits of the French capital, which prides itself on keeping its historic character intact in the face of rampant development elsewhere.
Designed by Swiss architects Herzog and Meuron, the Triangle Tower – which will resemble the shape of a giant wedge of Toblerone chocolate – is to be completed in 2026 at a cost of 660 million euros (£555m), according to the developers, Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW).
The plan for the skyscraper was launched in 2008 and then approved in 2015 by Paris’s socialist mayor, Anne Hidalgo, against resistance from her Green party allies in city hall.
Hidalgo, who is standing in April’s French presidential election, has tried to burnish her credentials as an environmental campaigner, tackling traffic congestion in the city and favouring clean transport, especially bicycles.
The conservative mayor of the 15th district where the tower will stand, Philippe Goujon, is also against the project, telling AFP that “the neighbourhood will be devastated for several years”.
Already, he said, there was a constant flow of trucks and “four giant cranes” had been deployed.
The city’s Green legislators have denounced the tower as a “climatic aberration” that should be abandoned because of its “catastrophic carbon footprint”.