Snøhetta to Design Le Monde Headquarters

The announcement comes just over ten years after the French paper of record moved into its Christian de Portzamparc-designed building on Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui in the 13th arrondissement, and just over one week after the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Although the renderings of the winning scheme have a dark tinge to them, the news is optimistic, both in its timing and in the implied message that traditional media is still of value, enough to warrant a new building for the Le Monde Group and its newspaper and magazines.

Snøhetta describes their design, which is located along Avenue de France in the 13th arrondissement, as a bridge that literally connects the two sides of the site together and figuratively connects Le Monde with its readers. The arched form visually recalls the stretched sculptures of Anish Kapoor, but this comparison ends with the building's exterior skin, which the architects describe as "a pixelated matrix of glass [that] gives the building a homogenous character when viewed from distance, but at the same time reveals a greater level of complexity as the view approaches." A plaza with views of the Seine and the nearby Gare d'Austerlitz sits below the low arch, whose ceiling is studded with LEDs that "can provide basic illumination or abstract representations of new flow," according to the architects.

A target date for construction and completion of the building has yet to be announced.