The Metropolitan Tower

The first English-language edition of this influential French standard reference on the subject of the urban high-rise

The Metropolitan Tower is the first English-language edition of an influential French standard reference on the topic of the urban high-rise, originally published in 2012. It summarizes, interprets, and explains the research of French architect and teacher Michel Kagan (19532009). Featuring some 600 photographs, sketches, and plans, along with Kagan's own writings and contributions by 26 distinguished international authors who respond to his ideas with key elements of their own research, the volume comprehensively explores the typology of the metropolitan high-rise since the birth of early modernism.

In contrast with the individual expressionism of a single building, Kagan proposes an architecture of relationships that considers above all the context: Place is the most important material for urban planning, without which the city does not exist.

For this new English edition, the book's content has been revised, updated, and expanded in the light of new research conducted by faculty of the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture (ENSA) Paris-Val de Seine under the direction of Nathalie Régnier-Kagan. It offers a fascinating and multilayered panorama informing students, architects and critics alike on the topic of vertical architecture.

• A standard reference on the typology of the urban high-rise, now available in English for the first time in a revised, updated, and expanded edition
• Summarizes, interprets, and explains the research of French architect and teacher Michel Kagan (19532009)

• Texts and original research by 26 distinguished international authors respond to Michel Kagan's ideas

  Autorentext

  Michel Kagan (1953-2009) was a French architect who founded his own Paris-based firm, Kagan Architectures, in 1987. He held teaching appointments at Columbia University, where he was an assistant to Kenneth Frampton, the University of Toronto, Université du Québec à Montréal, University of Montreal, and, as a professor, at the École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture (ENSA) Paris-Belleville.

Nathalie Régnier-Kagan is an architect and professor at the ENSA Paris-Val de Seine. She has worked with Richard Meier & Partners in New York, among others, before joining Kagan Architectures in Paris in 1992, directing the firm on her own since the death of her husband Michel Kagan in 2009.