French Planning

I spent a very interesting couple of house at the Pavilion de l'Arsenal, the home of Parisien planning, and outside the Hotel de Ville, which is displaying an exhibition of the main developments planned for Ile de France, Paris aujourd'hui et demain.

It is particularly interesting because many people think of Paris as a museum city where nothing changes. In the centre, that is to some extend true, although plans to develop the banks of the Seine may change that. Most of the projects, however, are taking place on the outskirts of the city, or in the suburbs. They don't insist on attention as so many London projects do, perhaps because the vogue for tall buildings hasn't taken off to the same extent.

LeWeb

A very interesting week exploring the French tech schene at LeWeb, Europe's largest tech conference, and with the folks at Cap Digital, Paris' official government cluster.

I'll be writing about it for th next edition of Invest in France magazine, so for now I'll just restrict my thoughts to the presentation by Tony Fadell, CEO and founder of Nest Labs (and the guy who invented the iPod). He was presenting his latest gadget, a smart thermostat who learns from your habits to automatically control the temperature of your house (or be controlled via iphone). It reminds me of one of the very first articles I ever wrote, for Australian Computer magazine, about Bill Gates house. He could run a bath from his car, so it was the perfect temperature when he arrived home. Screens and music centres around the house automatically screened images and tunes adapted to the personal preference of the person in the room at the time. Even the plants could be watered automatically. That was back in 1998. Soon, those options will be open for all of us....

Silicon Roundabout to get a facelift

So, the ugly Old Street Roundabout, home to Tech City, is to get a £50 million facelift.

According to No.10, the new civic building will host classrooms, co-working spaces and workshops equipped with the latest 3D printing technology, for use by both the local start-ups and the wider community. It will be a resource for start-ups, a cenre for international conferences and investement fairs, and a place to engage school children.

Sounds wonderful, but I do hope more thought is put into the actual building. The vision presented by Architecture 00:/ (shown above), who have long been working on ideas for the roundabout (below is the first attempt), is already being slated by the critics.

Interestingly, The Guardian says it will be run as a community interest company: just like what Fringe Benefits, my masters renegeration study group, proposed for the Olympic Park's broadcast centre.