The "La Marseillaise" building

La Marseillaise is a landmark tower in the Euromed district of Marseille, France, designed to embody the city's Mediterranean identity. The project follows the urban planning logic that high-rise buildings should be concentrated near existing infrastructure and transportation hubs in city centers, promoting sustainable urbanization. Among the towers in this district, the earliest and best-known is the CMA CGM Headquarters designed by Zaha Hadid Architects. Several other towers followed, including residential buildings by Jean-Baptiste Pietri and Yves Lion architects that command sea views. The architect behind La Marseillaise sought to avoid the generic interchangeable glass towers that could exist anywhere and instead create a building that unmistakably belongs to the Mediterranean sky. The design expresses a desire to play with the sun, drawing shadows across the sky through simple geometry that generates complex mathematical games. It is both simple and complex, a concrete building that feels like unfinished concrete, lightweight and fiber-reinforced, as light as an uncompleted architectural drawing. It resembles lines and strokes seen only on a computer screen, the work of a carefree architect who does not know how to finish. The beauty lies in the sketch-like quality, leaving blank canvas areas that invite imagination. La Marseillaise is a hymn to light, a march, a flight of steps, a passageway to the sky. These towers offer the pleasure of both beautiful views and a sense of belonging that works from inside and out, whether in fog, rain, or gloomy night. Beyond the glass, only a silhouette remains, adorned with shadows and light; the sunshades merge into the ceiling with matching colors from inside to outside, dissolving the boundaries created by glass. Light and color intermingle; La Marseillaise displays true blue-white-red, replacing the French sky blue, royal off-white, and horizon clouds with the blood-red ochre and brick red of surrounding buildings. From outside, the building aims to inscribe its own lines against the sky above, filling the air with pale shadows and pearlescent lights, trees and figures whose presence can never be certain because they exist in the sky itself.