Tour Europlaza, Office skyscraper in La Défense district, Courbevoie, France.
Tour Europlaza is a 135-metre office skyscraper with 31 floors in La Défense, on the Courbevoie side of the district. Its glass and granite facade forms a vertical slab with a stepped, angular roofline: a central gabled section flanked by sloping glass and metal surfaces, topped by a thin mast. A narrow tan-coloured section with small rectangular windows runs along the right side, and a sign near the lower right reads "EUROPLAZA".
Architect Pierre Dufau, with Jean-Pierre Dacbert and Michel Stenzel, designed the tower on an empty plot in northern La Défense before EPAD existed; it was completed in 1972 as Tour Septentrion. Its concrete pillars were clad in anodised aluminium, giving a bronze colour. A 1999 renovation by B&B Architectes replaced the facades with glass and granite, added a mast and sloping roof, and renamed it Tour Europlaza.
The building shows how French corporate architecture looked in the 1970s, when the country was building modern office centers. You can see in its shape how designers of that time balanced height with function.
The building has good accessibility through multiple entrances and is within walking distance of the La Défense metro stations. Keep in mind that this is an active office building, so public areas are limited.
The name Septentrion comes from the French word for north, a reference to the tower's plot in the then-unbuilt northern part of La Défense, chosen before the EPAD planning authority even existed. Architect Pierre Dufau designed it with Jean-Pierre Dacbert and Michel Stenzel, who later worked with him on Tour First.
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