LEXUS HYBRID DRIVE AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF SHIGERU BAN
The GS 450h takes to the highway, from Paris to the site of Shigeru Ban’s Centre Pompidou-Metz and ending in coastal Marseille
Two years after our Lexus GS 450h stopped off at the site of Shigeru Ban’s hatted creation, Centre Pompidou-Metz finally opened its doors in May this year. To celebrate the opening of this centre for art and culture, we revisited the drive inspired by its innovative architect. Our Lexus GS 450h took us from Ban’s nest-like Paris studio to Metz and then south to the vibrant fusion that is Marseille.
THE LEXUS GS 450h IN PARIS
Paris’s Centre Pompidou forces you to rethink your ideas about buildings. By wrapping the building’s functional innards around its steel exoskeleton, architects Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano freed up gallery space inside.
For 30 years this masterpiece has remained one of modern architecture’s hardest acts to follow. But Shigeru Ban has done just that with his radical design for the Pompidou’s first satellite museum, in Metz.
Tucked away on the Paris Pompidou’s roof, above the sprawl of colour-coded ducting and pipes, Ban’s temporary studio, built from his trademark material – paper – is invisible from street level.
Below, a silver Lexus GS 450h weaves its way through the traffic, functioning mainly in full electric mode, in which no fuel is consumed nor CO2 emitted. Just as the Pompidou changed architectural ideas, the astonishingly efficient GS 450h, featuring Lexus Hybrid Drive, is challenging perceptions about luxury sedans.
That electric-drive motor propelling the Lexus through central Paris is the vehicle’s premier innovation. It takes over from the conventional 3.5-litre direct-injection six-cylinder engine at low speeds and then cuts in to boost acceleration, enabling the GS 450h to deliver V8-like performance while approaching the economy of a frugal V6. And thanks to its Lexus Hybrid Drive system, the GS 450h emits an exceptionally low combined 179g/km of CO2.
SHIGERU BAN'S METZ
Close to the borders of Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg, and once a Napoleonic garrison, Metz has an impressive cultural pedigree. How many provincial cities can boast lampposts designed by Philippe Starck and stained-glass cathedral windows by Marc Chagall?
Shigeru Ban’s Centre Pompidou-Metz, like its Parisian predecessor, is an extraordinary architectural statement. The €60 million building looks like a big hat.
The next leg of my journey is just 54km to the city of Nancy. Although the space once functioned as a giant car park, Nancy’s Place Stanislas is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and strictly pedestrian-only. So, with the help of its parking assist feature, I ease the GS 450h into a space on a crowded rooftop car park so we can explore on foot.
SAVING ENERGY IN ALSACE
We stop overnight in Colmar, the wine capital of Alsace. It is so close to the German border that local accents, Gothic architecture and place names seem more German than French. Our route the next morning takes us into the cheese-producing Vallée de Munster and through the tiny village of Hohrodberg to roads that wind up into the spectacular Ballons des Vosges Regional Park. Further on we pause at two beautiful glacial lakes, Lac Blanc and Lac Noir, which are put to work as part of an ingenious hydroelectric system that uses their 10,000-year-old natural reservoirs to store energy.
When electricity demand is high, water from Lac Blanc is funnelled through a turbine into Lac Noir 100 metres below. When demand drops, the turbine operates as a pump, pushing water back uphill into Lac Blanc. It’s all about managing energy by minimising waste, much like the Lexus Hybrid Drive under the sculpted bonnet of the GS 450h: some of the electric-drive motor’s power supply comes from capturing the kinetic energy normally lost during braking.
An effortless autoroute sprint from Lac Blanc delivers us late that morning to Lyon where one more building designed by Paris Centre Pompidou creator Renzo Piano awaits us.
We stay overnight in Valence, and the names Privas, Aubenas, Vogüé and Vallon-Pont-d’Arc are punched into the car’s built-in satellite navigation system in preparation for a pre-dawn start through the glorious countryside of the Ardèche.
We arrive in Marseille in two hours. Not unlike Metz, Marseille continues to serve as a cultural crossroads. The city is physically closer to Italy than to Paris and the cafes in the Old Port of Marseille feature a seafood-based Mediterranean cuisine.
Given the blended themes present in the work of Shigeru Ban, not to mention the advanced technology of the vehicle that delivered us here, we could not have chosen a more appropriate end point for our journey.
To experience how the GS 450h sets a new benchmark in intelligent automotive luxury, book a test drive here.
If you have any questions or comments about Lexus Hybrid Drive, why not visit the Lexus blog?
