The exhibition that presented the projects of 10 architects who responded to the international architecture contest for construction of the 'Tour Phare' in La Défense, launched by Unibail in late 2006, contributed to current thoughts on sky-rises on an international scale.
The Skysail tower presented by the Agence Nicolas Michelin & Associés gave 'meaning to monumentality'. Skysail is resolutely anti-block and was one of the only projects that proposed a hybrid typology, in the sense that it disrupted the classical image of towers. The result is a complex geometry in the image of the Jantar Mantar Observatory in New Delhi, India, a succession of horizontal strata of different lengths.
Skysail is designed like a great sail. It stands diagonally on the site and is a streamlined object that soars upwards to soar upwards from three support points, like the neighbouring CNIT.
The top of the tower does not look like a hidden technical block, it is a belvedere, poised like a glazed platform in the middle of the sky.