For French architect Dominique Perrault, 2014 is off to an impressive start. Last month, he inaugurated two new projects—DC Tower 1 in Vienna and a Grand Theater for the small town of Albi in southern France. At the same time that his Paris-based firm is designing tall buildings and large developments throughout Europe and Asia, he’s taken on several prestigious projects in and around his home city. They include a new entrance pavilion for the Château de Versailles, the restoration of the legendary Longchamp Racecourse in Paris’s Bois de Boulogne park, and the transformation of the Poste du Louvre, encompassing an entire city block. Here, he talks about his latest works, his urban design strategy, and his “architecture of absence.”
Your DC Tower 1 in Vienna is now the tallest in Austria. Jean Nouvel completed a tower in Vienna a few years ago. But in New York, several supertall residential buildings—including one by your fellow countryman Christian de Portzamparc—have received plenty of backlash lately. Is there a turning of the tide, where the U.S. had historically always championed tall building and Europe had not, but now cities like Vienna and London are embracing it?
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