Tours Aillaud, which is also known as Tours Nuages, is a group of residential buildings located in the suburb of Paris, France, called Nanterre. As the shortage of post-war housing was great, these modernist buildings were the response of France, a country that was erecting public housing in the suburbs between 1954 and 1973.
Some of the buildings were built in 1977 at the outskirts of La Défense, which is a major business district of the Paris Metropolitan Area and of the Île-de-France region. They were the creation of Emile Aillaud, from whom they got their name, too.
There are 18 different towers, which include 1,607 apartments altogether. The tallest being Tours 1 and 2 with 39 floors, stand at 105 meters (344 feet). The Tours 3 to 10 have 20 floors, and the Tours 11 to 18 have 13 floors. Having the idea of bringing modern utopia to the people who would be living in them, it somehow did not succeed in bringing this utopian life to the people, but instead, crime and poverty began to plague the buildings.
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That was the reason for France to stop commissioning them in 1973, even though some of the buildings were finished in the 1980s. Even though the towers are different in height, they resemble the same shape, consisting of the superposition of several cylinders.
Their cladding is made of frescos representing clouds in the sky, which is the origin of their name (French for clouds = nuages). As they are slowly deteriorating, there are some reports that the buildings will be destroyed, even though some people still find some inspiration in them, with the hope that the utopia that was planned to come with their construction will soon come.
