Reflected by the shimmering waters of the Bassin du Roi in Le Havre in France, a new residential tower by Hamonic + Masson & Associés has spiralled its way up and out of the northern French city. The Tour Alta, or Alta Tower, was completed in 2023 by the Parisian architecture firm, alongside major construction group Legendre Construction, and joins a small but striking collection of world-renowned, modern edifices already established along Le Havre’s waterfront.

Le Havre has a layered history of modern architecture. Following significant bombing during World War II, the city’s urban fabric required extensive redevelopment. Like many other European cities, this offered architects and urban planners a tabula rasa—an opportunity to assume unprecedented agency in the shaping of modern cities through architecture. Some of the more colourful contributions to Le Havre’s architectural palette during this period came from Auguste Perret and Oscar Niemeyer; two celebrated names within the canon of modern architecture, but also whose local projects—chiefly Perret’s masterplan for Le Havre (1945-1964) and Niemeyer’s Le Volcan building (1982)—were central to the competition brief for Tour Alta. The competition was launched in 2015 by Mayor Édouard Charles Philippe and client SOGEPROM, Sociéte Générale’s property development branch. Other notable entries came from Herzog & de Meuron, and fellow French architect Rudy Ricciotti. 

Perret was enlisted as the new master planner for Le Havre in 1945 and spent the subsequent two decades developing the city’s downtown into its present grid, now labelled a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Perret also added some of his buildings to the scheme, such as the concrete St Joseph’s Church (1956) whose octagonal, lighthouse-like spire punctures Le Havre’s tranquil skyline. Located at the heart of this grid, the Alta Tower’s situatedness explicitly recognises Perret’s master plan and significant reconstruction of the area. Indeed, Perret had originally envisioned a residential building to be built on the very site itself. Over half a century later, a part of Perret’s ambitious vision for the city comes realised in Tour Alta, whose most significant acknowledgement of Perret’s influence in Le Havre, perhaps, is the sweeping, 360-degree views of the city—and consequently, its master plan layout—below, that the new apartments offer their residents.

The residential architecture of Alta Tower also rubs concrete shoulders with Niemeyer’s Le Volcan, another conspicuous, modern architectural complex located two blocks north of the Bassin du Roi. Its white, volcano-like form contains a cinema, theatre and public library. This time, the Niemeyer gem becomes a well-established cultural destination for locals and tourists alike. In line with the competition brief, the official statement argues that Paris-based Hamonic + Masson & Associés have attempted to reflect "Niemeyer’s distinctively curvaceous" forms in their vertically serpentine Tour Alta.

The release further states that Hamonic + Masson & Associés acknowledged Niemeyer and Perret as "two sacred monsters of [architectural] history." In their design for the Alta Tower, the architects have therefore attempted to “combine the essential elements characteristic of each: the form and sensuality of Niemeyer, the grid and order of Perret, with concrete being the material common to all three projects.” So strong was the historical and stylistic continuity between the Tower and its harbingers believed to be, that the design was issued full planning permission on its first application and received no objections from local associations.

“Le Havre is Perret [and] Niemeyer, but above all, it is the spirit of an architectural adventure,” the statement mentions. This indeed proves true, since the city offers much more than its modernist history alone. There have been many more contemporary architectural developments that are especially remarkable and worthy of attention. One notable example is the Pôle Simone Veil, a cultural and sports facility launched by Parisian firm K architectures’ Sigwalt Herman in 2021.

Functioning as a residential tower, the Tour Alta comprises 64 apartments and rises 17 stories above the pavement. It presents an optimistic alternative to housing within a market that often foregrounds standardised, ready-to-use products by employing ‘column-free’ apartment design, an effort to encourage and empower dwellers to customise and personalise the spatial character of their homes. The use of reinforced concrete—arranged in grids and unfolding in an upward movement throughout the structure—allows for such a scheme, supported at the boundaries by prefabricated concrete columns, brackets, and beams.

Apart from its conceptual links to modernism, the interiors of the Tower evoke a sense of the British High-Tech aesthetic from the 70s. In the communal ground-floor areas, steel, glass, and mirrored surfaces visually dominate to establish a distinctly monochromatic environment with tactile qualities stemming from the metallic palette.

These tones, alongside the overall shape and form of the building, also elicit other architectural examples. Although it offers a distinctively new and disruptive addition to Le Havre’s sea-facing skyline, the Tower’s twisting typology is not unprecedented within the wider built environment. The same pedagogy may be found employed within a series of revered international examples across Dubai, Milan, and Shanghai. Just as glass and concrete deviate around its vertical axis at the Alta Tower, so it evokes Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s (SOM) Cayan Tower (2013), the epochal shining contortion of the Dubai Marina. The wry neck of an architectural form can also be located in Gensler's helical Shanghai Tower (2015) and Zaha Hadid Architect’s Generali Tower, nicknamed Lo Sorto – 'The Twisted One'.

Consciously or not, by joining this global family of twisting towers, the Tour Alta pushes itself and Le Havre at large onto a wider global stage; an explicit expression by a structure demanding to be recognised and reckoned with. Similarly, peppered throughout the building are minimalistic artistic renditions of its twisted shape. Projected onto walls as logos and emblems, they remind residents that they are part of “a real landmark”.

While the Tower’s height and form ensure a certain visibility and immediate tangibility on the shores of Le Havre (even if it is only the third tallest building in Le Havre, following St Joseph’s Church and the Hotel de Ville, another Perret design), its aspirational quality, not metaphorical in its ascend, striving to become a conceptually-recognisable ‘icon’, is entirely palpable. Although it hasn’t achieved universal landmark status just yet, perhaps in years to come the Alta Tower will extend far beyond the city and its watery limits. 

(Text by Sophie Hosking, intern at STIRworld)

Project Details

Name: Alta Tower
Architect: Hamonic + Masson & Associés
Location: Le Havre, Normandy, France
Completion Year: 2023
Client: SOGEPROM
Construction: Legendre Construction
Height: 55 metres, 17 storey
Typology: Residential tower