snøhetta-designed headquarters for the le monde group opens in paris

snøhetta has completed the headquarters of the le monde group, uniting the media company’s newsrooms and their 1,600 employees beneath the same roof. located in paris’ 13th arrondissement, the project takes the form of an arched building clad with a semi-transparent outer skin. the structure also incorporates a new plaza that integrates the building within the neighborhood. ‘since its inception the le monde group headquarters has embodied an architectural and symbolic counterpoint to the many challenges our societies face today,’ says founding partner of snøhetta, kjetil trædal thorsen.

image © marwan harmouche

snøhetta, working with local firm SRA architecture, was chosen to complete the project in 2015. ‘the building is primarily about opening up in a time where fear and uncertainty pushes our societies to increase barriers and strengthen security enforcement,’ kjetil trædal thorsen continues. ‘in this sense, the project invites us to reflect on how architecture can create spaces that can be both public and private, exterior and interior, transparent or opaque. like so many other of our projects, it is a hybrid building that explores the interstices of architecture and that is conceived to be at the service of the public.’

image © ludwig favre

located adjacent to the gare d’austerlitz railway station, the project is a close neighbor to the city’s latin quarter and the jardin des plantes. the concave form of the building bridges over the below-grade railyard, anchored on both sides with two seven-story cantilevering volumes held together by a complex network of steel. the architects explain that three gestural ‘cuts’ shape the building’s mass: the ‘sky cut’ reveals the oblique surface of the solar-panel-clad roof; the ‘city cut’ pulls the building back from the along its street-facing facade; and the ‘ground cut’ carves out the underside of the bridging structure, enveloping the new public plaza together beneath its expansive arched form.

image © ludwig favre

‘the construction of the le monde groupe headquarters marks a historic milestone for all our publications,’ explains the CEO of the le monde group, louis dreyfus. ‘our building illustrates both our editorial and aesthetic ambitions, but also the diversity of our newsrooms. in a world where the demand for high quality information is only increasing, our new common home offers our 1,600 employees a luminous working space with top amenities and dedicated spaces for each newsroom. this in turn ensures that we can continue to deliver journalistic content on all our platforms and in all formats, whether written or audiovisual, both today and in the future.’ see designboom’s previous coverage of the project here.

image © jared chulski

image © marwan harmouche

image © ludwig favre

image © ludwig favre

image © jared chulski

image © jared chulski

image © jared chulski

image © jared chulski

image © jared chulski

image © jared chulski

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project info:

name: le monde group HQ
building completed: first half of 2020 (started february 2017)
competition: 2014 – january 2015
building permit: january 2016
location: 67 avenue pierre mendès-france 75013 paris, france
certifications: BREEAM excellent, etiquette COV A+
size: 22,933 sqm net (SDP)
budget: confidential
client: le monde group with redman IDF

team —
main architect: snøhetta
landscape architecture: snøhetta
interior architecture (fixed furniture): snøhetta
local architect: SRA architectes
project coordinator building site: CICAD
engineering consultants competition: bollinger & grohmann
structure engineers: khephren ingeniérie
supervising office: veritas
environmental consultants: green affair
fire consultants: CSD-faces
HVAC consultants: barbanel
facade engineers: arcora
acoustics: LASA
kitchen consultants: conceptions nouvelles
finance consultant: gleeds

main construction —
structures and façade: eiffage construction + goyer
arch façade: glauser + AAB
partitions, plastering, painting: vallée