Commended recently by the Mipim AR Future Awards was the Grenelle Tower in Paris, France, designed by Atelier Zündel & Cristea. The skyscraper, from a distance, resembles crinkled white paper stacked high, with brown sheets randomly thrown in every few levels.

The architects dub this aesthetic design “spatial texture,” and it rises a total of 200 meters.

The “brown sheets” mentioned above are actually multi-level floors that are interspersed throughout the building and that bring open spaces and foliage to people working and living inside of the structure. Uniform levels surround these multi-dimensional spaces on all sides: a design that maximizes most space but allows for a myriad of uses.

Housed within the building will be garden apartments, offices, a concert hall, a museum, a swimming pool, a library, and commercial space on the ground floor. Renderings of the interior show angular, stark spaces defined by heavy use of white or gray marble and concrete.

The budget for construction is 300 million Euros, but the project is still in the concept phase; there is no groundbreaking date yet set.

Sitting on the bank of the Seine, it is the tallest structure in the vicinity, and one of only a handful of skyscrapers, making one question the building’s appropriateness.

Regardless, Mipim AR Future enjoyed the idea and rewarded it as such with an honorary mention.

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