« Pour la première fois un ouvrage examine les projets de tours à Paris sous tous leurs aspects, architecturaux, esthétiques évidemment, mais aussi urbanistiques, économiques, écologiques.
Merci donc à Mary Campbell Gallagher et aux personnalités et associations qui l’entourent, d’éditer ce livre et plus encore de lutter pour sauver Paris. Comme l’a dit Victor Hugo : « Sauver Paris, c’est plus que sauver la France, c’est sauver le monde. »
— Sénateur Philippe Pemezec
“By the end of this important book you too will realize, in the words of a famous leaflet of the Paris Commune: ‘the moment has come to fight with ferocity an enemy who has made pitiless war on us.’”
–– Lynn Ellsworth, president of NYC citizen activist groups Alliance for a Human-Scale City & Human-Scale NYC, Inc.
“Paris without Skyscrapers is an urgent book. It is in its argument obvious: the projects that it describes are appalling. Those who love Paris hope that it is not a prophetic book.”
— David Berlinski, American writer and long-time resident of Paris
“Ce livre est indispensable aux Parisiens et aux amoureux de Paris, en ces temps ou des architects et des politiques sont insensibles à la beauté de leur propre ville.”
— Maurice Culot, Architecte et Président du Groupe Arcas, Paris
“Peruse Paris Without Skyscrapers and you will understand what the ongoing battle over the skyline – and the very soul – of Paris is all about. In knowledgeable, sometimes passionate but always thoughtful and learned essays, prominent architects, philosophers and activists weigh in on the folly of allowing “starchitects” to erect forests of high rise towers within the limits of the City of Light, robbing it of its identity and turning it into a soulless Dubai-sur-Seine. Saving Paris from this fate is a must. Reading this important book is a requirement.”
– Harriet Welty Rochefort, author French Toast, French Fried and Joie de Vivre
“To destroy the example of Paris as a city of civilised streets, built in humane local stone, for the sake of the antiquated and discredited doctrines of the architectural modernists would be a crime against the civilisation of France, and against the European idea of the city.”
–– Roger Scruton, Writer and Philosopher (1944 – 2020)
« Paris, Ville Lumière ou ville martyre ? Un livre qui nous montre qu’une autre parole que celle des démolisseurs existe : défendons le rôle de Paris comme ville modèle »
— William Pesson, architecte membre du groupe ARCAS, historien de l’art, président de l’Association des Amis de Quatremère
“Paris is an exemplar of city form, not an anonymous backwater, and its civic markers—Notre-Dame, the Eiffel Tower, Invalides—are historically meaningful iconic elements that enhance and celebrate the public realm. Its woven pattern of public space, its squares and boulevards, constitute its symbolic identity. This book compellingly makes the argument, with thoughtful essays by a remarkable, diverse group of voices, that the case financial and political players make for building towers in Paris is utterly without merit.”
— Barbara Littenberg – Co-author with Steven Peterson, of
Space & Anti-Space, the Fabric of Place, City, and Architecture
« L’ouvrage regroupe autant d’auteurs qui de façon sensible et érudite démontrent que les tours implantés aux marges de la capitale ne sont pas une évolution mais une négation de la ville. Une machination monumentale au service du seul profit qui bouleverse à coup de boutoirs, la typicité de Paris. »
— Patrick Bezzolato, Photographer, Paris
Last modified: July 5, 2021
