Because we believe in nothing but the strongest structural redundancies, we have not just the brilliant Stephen Zacks on the Ian-replacing (aw, we jest, there’s no replacing our other brain) lineup today, but also softballer extraordinaire and all-around all-rounder Michael Silverberg. Who has a little something to say about Paris, planning, and porpoises. On y va, Michael!

Much like our love for kittens and hot cocoa, our appreciation of crazy floating buildings knows no bounds. But MVRDV, one of ten firms that just unveiled radical plans for reshaping Paris by 2030, has simply gone too far with its proposed hovering Brutalist blue mass. If the rendering is to be believed, this insane blocky windowless panopticon would float over the Seine, just north of the Eiffel Tower, menacing all those who would dare …

(Wait, what’s that? It’s just a graphical representation of the city’s resources? So does that mean the other image doesn’t show a crazed two-headed porpoise lurking outside the city walls. OK, fine.)

Less interesting than our Friday-afternoon flights of fancy but more, you know, accurate, MVRDV wants to increase Paris’s density by adding new highways and Metro lines. Meanwhile, the nine other teams (which include Richard Rogers and Christophe de Portzamparc but, weirdly, not Jean Nouvel, whose high-profile buildings in his hometown have already done much reshaping of their own) presented their plans to President Sarkozy yesterday.

Portzamparc would turn Paris into four archipelagos, Rogers wants to reattach the city to its restive suburbs with patches of parkland, and Bernardo Secchi and Paola Viganò, the Telegraph reports, “have proposed enlarging the city and laying it out as a ‘porous sponge,’ where waterways are given pride of place.” A sponge, eh? After the floating blue block, I guess everything else is a little underwhelming.

Grand Paris: Architects reveal plans to transform French capital [The Telegraph]