Cloud Towers Nanterre

photography by GIANNI OPRANDI text by MARTINE FEIPEL and JEAN BECHAMEIL Photographer Gianni Oprandi returned to the Pablo Picasso quarter of Nanterre, a surburb west of Paris constructed in the late ’70s, where he sometimes played as a kid. Such social housing projects mushroomed around Paris as part of a utopian urban policy called “new cities” (“villes nouvelles”). Today, this suburban enclave is in disrepair, and is turning into a violent ghetto. Public authorities debate the costs of destruction or repair. As problematic as these “cloud towers” are now, they once embodied true social and architectural ambition. Where is that ambition today? Planned and designed in response to the ’70s housing crisis, these projects were meant to have all the modern comforts and inaugurate a new kind of communal living, in keeping with the social objective of providing accessible housing for all and fostering community spirit. The objective was to…