Essor Tower Above the Périphérique, Paris

4 October 2017 · Paris

Paris keeps its edges blunt. A concrete highway barrier runs the foreground, arrow markings still sharp against the pale surface, while a green embankment rises behind it — grass, mature trees, the quiet geometry of a city park squeezed between lanes. The Essor office tower anchors the skyline behind it all, brick-red and deliberate against a high autumn sky scattered with cirrus. Infrastructure as landscape: the périphérique doesn't interrupt the city here so much as frame a version of it.