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.

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.’


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.