Rebel architect gets nod for highest Paris skyscraper

US architect Thom Mayne — a rebel known for his love of risk-taking — has been chosen to build Paris’s tallest-ever skyscraper, rivalled in height only by the Eiffel Tower.

Mayne’s Los Angeles-based company Morphosis beat a cast of nine global design stars including Britain’s Norman Foster for the commercial project to be built on Paris’s western rim, in the La Defence business district.

“Le Phare” (The Lighthouse), Mayne’s 300-metre building — a twin structure combining a rectangular base with a soaring, organic-shaped tower — was selected by an international jury following a contest organised by the French property group Unibail.

The project, the 61-year-old architect’s first in France, is set to cost 800 million.

Due for completion in 2012, the building is set to dwarf its neighbours in the high-rise La Defence district — taking second place only to the Eiffel Tower (which rises 324 metres tall) on the greater Paris skyline.

Designed with ecology and sustainable development in mind, the “Lighthouse” will be capped with a field of wind turbines, while a “double-skin” of steel and glass will create a self-cooling mechanism for summer.

Both its base and tower will appear to rise up organically from the soil — part of Mayne’s signature style — with a system of tunnels curling like roots under the neighbouring buildings.

Mayne, a rebel known to combine the latest technologies and materials with a penchant for design risk-taking, has been dubbed by some the “bad boy” of building design.

Last year he won the Pritzker prize, the world’s top architecture award.