“This site is so
special because
you are up in the
mountain, you
feel isolated from
everything”
Baobab is an all-wood skyscraper project
proposed for Paris.
(Photo: Michael Green Architecture)
BAOBAB IN PARIS
From the “tall wood” wizards
at
Vancouver-headquartered
Michael Green Architecture
(completed North American
projects T3 and the Wood
Innovation and Design Centre
also appear on our list), Baobab
— presumably named after
the fabled tree found across
Madagascar and the African
savanna — is an all-wood
skyscraper project proposed for
Paris.
Submitted in 2015 to the
Reinventer
Paris
design
competition seeking innovative
infill ideas for a couple dozen
different redevelopment sites
spread across the city, Baobab,
all potentially record-breaking
35 stories of it, would be a truly
mixed-use development that
(luxury and affordable housing,
retail, community gardens and
a bus depot) spans Boulevard
Périphérique,
a
perpetually
gridlocked ring road encircling
central Paris.
If built, Baobab would sequester
an impressive 3,700 metric
tons of carbon dioxide — the
equivalent of removing 2,207
cars from French highways for a
year or heating a single home for
982 years.
“Our goal is that through
innovation,
youthful
social
contact and overall community
building, we have created a design
that becomes uniquely important
to Paris,” says Green of the
proposal which was conceived for
the competition in collaboration
with French real estate developer
REI and Parisian design studio
DVDD. “Just as Gustave Eiffel
shattered our conception of what
was possible a century and a
half ago, this project can push
the envelope of wood innovation
with France in the forefront.”
14 . wood architecture