TOUR CBX

Paris la Défense, France

Located on what was one of the last remaining sites in the La Défense high-rise business district just west Development Team of Paris, Tour CBX (CBX Tower) projects an iconic image while providing a high-quality working envi- Owner ronment and making efficient use of a site constrained by its small size and by view-corridor restrictions. Dexia Crédit Local The 44,000-square-meter (473,612 sf) tower’s footprint occupies half of the site’s 2,400 square meters Paris la Défense, France (25,833 sf). An innovative podium and elliptical floor-plate design provide up to 1,500 square meters www.dexia-clf.fr (16,146 sf) of space on each of the 34 upper floors. Developer La Défense, girdled by an inner ring road and by the Seine beyond the city limits of Paris, has been reinventing itself as a commercial district since the 1950s. In 1972, outraged by the construction of the Tishman Speyer Paris, France 58-story Tour Montparnasse in Paris’s historic 15th arrondissement, the national government banned fu- www.tishmanspeyer.com ture skyscrapers in the city center, directing new towers to outlying La Défense. The new business district was accorded greater status with the construction of a symbolic center, La Grande Arche, marking the Design Architect western terminus of the historical axis of Paris that aligns the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, PC Champs-Élysées. Today 150,000 people work in Paris la Défense’s 3.5 million square meters (37 million New York, New York sf) of office space, making it the largest CBD in Europe and the continent’s busiest transportation hub. www.kpf.com Developer Tishman Speyer worked closely with the local planning authority—the Public Establish- Associate Architect ment for the Installation of La Défense (EPAD)—and architects Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates to ensure SRA Architectes that the project would have a positive impact on the surrounding area and the Parisian skyline. The de- Châtillon, France signers aimed to create a landmark tower that would provide maximum flexibility for the speculative www.sra-architectes.com office building’s prospective tenants as well as a prestigious corporate image. The result is an asymmet- ric, bladelike design that provides flexible floor plates as well as a striking, 14-meter-high (46 ft) entrance plaza, an elegant reception area, natural stone floors and walls, and extensive glazing. The four-story podium houses public and retail services, a 550-seat restaurant, and a 100-seat cafeteria; the podium fa- cade is completely transparent, providing extensive natural light while increasing visibility and drawing passersby into the building. At 142 meters (466 ft), Tour CBX is Paris la Défense’s 14th tallest skyscraper. Its lowest office floor is on level five, which is at the same height as the tenth floor of adjacent buildings. The tower is chilled by ceiling-mounted fan-coil air-handling units. A security station provides closed-circuit television moni- toring, and access to all private areas is controlled by electronic badges. The structure was the first in France to feature destination-control elevators linked to the access identification system. These elevators are so efficient that only two banks of five elevators were required, reducing the size of the core and in- creasing the size and improving the efficiency of the floor plates. Additional amenities include room

WINNER · COMMERCIAL 21 Project Data Web Page www.tishmanspeyer.com/properties/ Property.aspx?id=8

Site Area 2,400 square meters (25,833 sf)

Facilities 44,000 square meters (473,612 sf) gross building area 38,500 square meters (414,424 sf) net leasable office area 13 structured parking spaces

Land Uses office, parking

Start/Completion Dates January 2003–September 2005

Jury Statement Built as a speculative office tower on one of the last remaining sites in the high-rise La Défense business district of Paris, Tour CBX was sold to its primary tenant. The development team overcame the problems of a difficult site to produce an elegant 34-story tower that projects an iconic image and provides an exceptional working environment.

22 service and connections to La Défense’s fiber-optic communications system. A double-height top floor offers impressive executive office space and exceptional views of Paris. Construction began in January 2003 and was completed in September 2005 at a total development cost of Û280 million, including the cost of the land. Shortly thereafter, in December 2005, the French- Belgian banking group Dexia Crédit Local purchased the building to serve as its regional headquarters.

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