Now complete, the Duo towers, which rise to the rank of the second highest inhabited tower in Paris after the Montparnasse tower (209 meters), are far from being twins. Designed by Jean Nouvel, this gigantic project is made up of two asymmetrical towers with different leanings: Duo 1 (height 180 meters and 39 floors) and Duo 2 (122 meters and 27 floors). Dressed in the 13e district, between the ring road, the boulevards of the Maréchaux and the railway line of the Gare d’Austerlitz, the two buildings have a double inclination. The first tilts in two directions towards the avenue de France and towards the ring road; the second diverges from the first tower by successive withdrawals forming raised terraces. Thanks to this inclination, the two buildings play with reflections, multiplying the optical effects.
The Duo towers house the offices of the BPCE banking group and offer spaces open to the public: an auditorium, shops, green terraces as well as a freely accessible green space with a gazebo garden perched above the railway tracks. The complex also houses a 4-star hotel with 139 rooms located on the ten upper levels of Duo 2, its restaurant and its bar.
But this new emblem of the capital which, as a link between Paris and Ivry, also wants to be a new urban landmark of Greater Paris, has the taste of a bygone future, as a recent article in the Monde. In these times of global warming, the few hundred solar panels installed on the roof of the tallest tower are not enough to offset the disastrous carbon footprint of the thousands of tons of cement, sand, steel, glass – which are as many non-renewable resources – as it took to build the Duo towers.