Italie 13

Its purpose was to profoundly modify the structure of some areas of the 13th arrondissement, mainly around the Avenue d'Italie which inspired its name.

The partially completed project led to the creation of numerous towers in the south of the arrondissement, notably Les Olympiades.

The Italie 13 project was one of the answers proposed by urbanists to the insalubrity of some areas of the city, mainly the 13th arrondissement which was generally considered to be "badly built."

Raymond Lopez, the advising architect at the Paris city hall, and his assistant Michel Holley, considered this renovation to be an opportunity to completely reorganize those areas, in the spirit of the Athens charter and Le Corbusier.

The project operated on a territory of 87 hectares between Place d'Italie, avenue de Choisy [fr] and Paris's outlying boulevards.

The Olympiades project, directly managed by Michel Holley from 1969 to 1974, is the only project (along with the Front de Seine district (located in the 15th arrondissement)) to fully respect the objectives of the guiding plan of urbanism: Towers of the district are named after cities which had hosted the Olympic Games: Athènes (Athens), Sapporo, Helsinki, Tokyo and others.

On the other side of the avenue, four towers and one groundscraper named after precious or semi-precious stones (Onyx, Beryl, Jade, Ruby) have been erected around a private garden built on the roof of the Italie 2 shopping mall (itself formerly known as Galaxie).

It encompasses from East to West: Towers in that district are directly displayed at the street level and as such are better integrated in the Paris urban layout.

There are also some isolated buildings and projects: As the towers were being successively erected, public criticism grew increasingly harsh, a view which was later shared by professionals and politicians.

Nevertheless, the Olympiades esplanade has maintained a rather important business and commercial role, something which is not true in other projects in Paris and its suburbs.

The high quality of the buildings which were created for affluent people means that flats are comfortable, have a nice unobstructed view and a lot of light (which is a rare luxury in Paris).

The Paris Rive Gauche project is an example of more traditional urbanism based on the alignment of mid-rise buildings in concert with the existing street layout.