Ever since Kevin Lynch wrote his book The view from the road, and later Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi studied the Las Vegas strip in depth, we have known that from the roads it is not the minutiae of architectural detail that is appreciated, but rather the grand formal gestures, whether or not they have explicit meanings.

The challenge of this shopping center was how to make a quiet place next to a highway and, at the same time, make the building identifiable for the hurried driver driving along the devilish peripheral boulevard of Paris.

Both objectives have been solved by conceiving a closed and introverted object. Were it not for the fact that its outer skin is made of stainless steel - which makes it look like a spaceship - it could be said to be the shell of a gigantic mollusk half-buried in the sand. If the isolation is sufficient, the first objective will have been achieved, but the second is no doubt guaranteed: at least for a while it will be the talk of the péripherique users...[+]