The Green Thing

Joining the ranks of bad architecture in Paris—most of it happily relegated to the city’s outer edges—is the new façade of the Docks en Seine project to redevelop the massive old warehouses on the Quai d’Austerlitz, on the Left Bank not far from the new Bibliothèque Nationale (also on the dubious architecture list). A faceted, tubular, snake-like steel and glass structure plopped onto the riverside face of the old building, the new poison-green façade was dubbed le truc vert—the green thing—by President Nicolas Sarkozy. Scheduled to be completed this fall, the building will house the Cité de la Mode, including the French Fashion Institute and a new European creative research center, along with restaurants, design shops and the city’s first full-fledged Apple Store.

Originally published in the July/August 2008 issue of France Today.