Will Paris get its own garden bridge?

After London’s garden bridge plans collapsed in the face of public opposition, Paris might pinch the idea and get its own. An architect team has sketched a preliminary design that would link the area surrounding the Bois de Vincennes to the Rive Gauche.

The bridge would form part of a complex including a new 180-metre residential skyscraper designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM), which was launched at the annual real estate conference in Cannes, MIPIM, held last week.

It would sit in the Charenton district just outside the 12th arrondissement, a part of the city that has essentially been concreted over and sits lifeless and uninviting. The skyscraper and bridge, as well as new green spaces, are part of a plan to renovate the entire district. This is one of several proposals and proponents of floral bridges will hope it is chosen. The development is being led by real estate development giant Bouygues.

The garden bridge would fan out from the bottom of the tall building, going over the Seine to Ivry-sur-Seine and over the tracks leaving from Bercy station, linking residents to the Bois de Vincennes.

“The plan extends local street Rue Baron-Le-Roy into the site to create a Paris-Charenton commercial linkage,” said one of the architects involved. “In addition to this, a landscaped garden bridge over active railway tracks connects people in the local area from the Bois de Vincennes to the River Seine.”

The project, therefore, has a strength that the one in London did not: the bridge is planned for a neglected part of the city desperate for urban renewal and another river crossing. The UK capital’s planned bridge location was in the middle of a glut of crossings in the centre, leading many to question the need for it.

The skyscraper is set to include a mixture of hotel rooms and residential properties, 30% of which would be rented out at affordable rates and many of which will be in co-living arrangements, with shared communal facilities. And the building will take advantage of the latest in green construction tech: “As part of a wider environmental strategy, the tower at Charenton-Bercy will become one of the most sustainable buildings in Europe,” said Yasemin Kologlu, associate director at SOM. She cites rainwater harvesting, greywater recycling and waste-to-energy conversion.