‘Tower of Figures’ in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France

Standing outside Paris in Issy-les-Moulineaux, the Tour aux Figures is an extraordinary seventy-eight-foot-tall sculpture created by French artist Jean Dubuffet and completed in nineteen eighty-eight. Atlas Obscura reports that Dubuffet was fascinated by outsider art—raw, unfiltered creativity—and channeled that into this tower, covering it in his signature Hourloupe style, a jigsaw pattern of white, black, red, and blue. The sculpture conceals a spiral staircase leading to a hidden observation area inside, embodying Dubuffet's desire for art to be immersive and interactive. He envisioned it as an 'anti-monument' that invites visitors to step away from the ordinary and into the extraordinary—a playful defiance of architectural convention.

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