PALACE OF STEEL TO HOUSE 4000 IN PARIS

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6947, 28 June 1929, Page 4

PALACE OF STEEL TO HOUSE 4000 IN PARIS

HUGE CRUCIFORM APARTMENT BLOCK NEWEST VARIANT OF SKYSCRAPER. PARIS, May 20. What type of structure is best suited to house 4000 persons in this city? Architects are busy formulating answers to such a question, for the new building laws to stimulate erection of apartment blocks has made the matter of immediate interest.

New York’s skyscrapers have their roots set deep in rock, but Paris has been reared largely on sandy foundations; it strides tunnels and ancient quarries. What New York can do, therefore, architects point out, Paris could not attempt. Weight must be distributed over a wider area and decreased as much as possible. It is felt also that constantly augmenting number of automobiles (200,000 circulating in Paris) make the maximum circulation of fresh air about each apartment desirable. Plants can transform the carbonic acid of the automobile gases into oxygen, so that the architests are making more and more provision for balcony gardens. Sunshine, too, they deem essential, if possible, for every room. A project put forward by Henri Coanda, engineer, and J. Dupre, architect, to meet the need of great apartments, has been given wide attention and is the subject of a recent article by Louis Bourdelles in the special number of I’lllustration devoted to buildings. This great structure is cruciform, with garden spaces in between the elbows. From one corner to another is a distance of more than 200 yards, and the steps of roof gardens rise from eight stories at the four arms to more than 20 stories in the central block, the terrace of which is more than 300 feet from the ground. Inside courtyards have disappeared completely in the design. When the city of Paris hold a competition for plans of apartment buildings, this one was placed "hors classo,’’ and, at an exhibition of designs at Nice received the "grand diplomo d’honneur." In the architects’ plan space is provided for 400 garages and for school, restaurant and community meeting rooms. Along the ground floor, where the wings abut on the main city sidewalks, shops aro to bo established for the convenience of tho inhabitants of this apartment city.