Paris may get first skyscraper in 40 years

Paris

THE last skyscraper built in Paris opened in 1973, an unadorned dark block, rising 59 stories - the Montparnasse Tower. It was considered a disaster. To this day, Parisians joke that the tower offers the best views in the city, because it is the only place from which you cannot see it. City officials went to work banning future skyscrapers altogether.

Now, however, four decades later, Paris is again considering a new skyscraper - a triangular, 42-storey glass office tower designed by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron that would stand in the city's south-west corner.

Over the years, Parisians have come to embrace some of the city's bolder architectural adventures, such as the glass pyramids inside the Louvre courtyard or the Pompidou Centre, built with its network of colourfully painted …