In Toulouse, the Occitanie tower will carry a “vertical forest”
Posted Apr 25, 2022, 1:34 PM
In a few days, the administrative court of Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) will rule on the appeals of the associations Les Amis de la Terre, DAL 31 and Non au skyscraper de Toulouse against the building permit for the Occitanie tower.
The Compagnie de Phalsbourg property company wants to erect a 153-meter green tower just next to the Matabiau station and in front of the Canal du Midi, on SNCF land. It will be part of the emblematic construction of the future Toulouse Euro Sud-Ouest business and housing district that the metropolis is developing around the station, pending the high-speed line which will put Toulouse at 3:10 from Paris in 2032. “The tower is a symbol of Toulouse’s ambition and the fight against urban sprawl,” says the mayor, Jean-Luc Moudenc (LR).
Legal proceedings have compromised the project, announced in 2017 at Mipim in Cannes, but the property company assures that it will build it as soon as they are purged. “Real estate prices have increased by 28% in five years in Toulouse, the project is therefore even more relevant today from an economic point of view”, says Eric Paillot, vice-president of the Compagnie de Phalsbourg.
The promoter wants to build a tower of 38 floors and 35,580 m2 which will mix 13,000 m² of offices for rent and around a hundred housing units for sale over 11,000 m². The eight-storey base in the shape of a boat will be occupied by a Hilton hotel as well as 4,000 m² of shops and SNCF premises. It will be surmounted by a tree-lined terrace and the tapered tower, which will end in a panoramic bar-restaurant. The cost is 150 million euros.
Two hundred plant species
The architect Daniel Libeskind, author of the new One World Trade Center, designed a double spiral of glass and trees like a vertical forest. Despite this adornment, environmentalists criticize the tower’s overwhelming height, its heat island effect and its energy-intensive operation. “We save territory by concentrating a lot of surface on a small plot”, answers Eric Paillot. “A vertical forest will be reconstituted with 3,000 m² of green space on land of 2,872 m² which offered few possibilities. »
In addition to two large terraces on the base and at the top, each floor will have large outdoor gardens with trees up to 5 meters high. The landscape architect Nicolas Gilsoul wants to plant, depending on the level, more than 200 plant species – ferns, broom, honeysuckle, jasmine, arbutus, Bohemian olive trees, maples… – compared to 15 on the vertical Bosco in Milan, the pioneer of vegetated towers. The landscape architect argues that “a double landscape ribbon consisting of a continuum of 88 hanging gardens spiraling around a 150-meter tower […], this has not been done anywhere else”. The developer has undertaken to check the resistance of the trees to the wind and to sign a maintenance contract with gardeners paid by the condominium so that the vegetation, and the tower, remain green.