Le Monde, the flagship of French news outlets, will have a new headquarters in early 2017: the editorial office will move from its current “residence”, built by Pritzker Prize winner Christian de Portzamparc after the New York Times building, to a new home near Austerlitz train station - it and became the subject of a competition. It is planned to accommodate all divisions of the Le Monde media group (Le Monde, Télérama, Courrier International, La Vie, L'Observateur) with 1200 employees on 20,000 m2 of the total area and to combine administrative divisions and editorial offices.
As the Le Monde group, after a long period of expensive rentals, is finally building their own building, it was decided to make it "to surprise [the observer] and express through architecture the image of modern and innovative media."
In November 2014, Le Monde announced an architectural competition. Along with foreign "stars" - Shigeru Ban, David Chipperfield, Snøhetta and 3XN - the competition projects were developed by the French: Manuel Gautran and Hardel + Le Bihan. Initially, the participation of Renzo Piano and OMA was also announced, but later they refused to participate in the competition.
The winner was chosen by a jury in the person of the main shareholder of the group, Pierre Berger, representatives of the metropolitan municipality and the Paris Urban Development Society. Despite the already announced date of the move, the time for the start of construction has not yet been agreed, and the further fate of the building, in which the publishing house is located, is also unknown.
The design site consists of two small areas located at some distance from each other due to planning restrictions. This moment became the starting point of the architectural decisions of the participants.
Pixel world. Winner - Snøhetta
One way or another, in all the projects presented there is a bridge connecting two sections: the best, in the opinion of the jury, was built by the Norwegian bureau Snøhetta. Their bridge is the whole building, forming an open area beneath it. This public space opens up the media to the public, complementing the building's entrance with a visitor center and audience on the one hand, and a cafe on the other. As the authors poetically characterize their project, “under the bridge, where a stream of water usually flows, we have life flowing”.
The concept was based on the relationship between the publication and the public. The authors hope that the new headquarters will be an integral part of the urban space, where visitors feel at home. The surface covering the area is equipped with LEDs, with the help of which it is supposed to transmit various information to this "media sky". And the decision to present the facades in the form of a pixel matrix of glazing elements of different degrees of transparency, as it were, reflects the accomplished transition of traditional media to the online space.
In the future, Snøhetta will work on the project with French partners - the studio
SRA, renowned for its expertise in the design of high-rise office buildings.
Planet Le Monde. 3XN
Another bridge building was proposed by the Danish bureau 3XN. The architects played with the name of the publishing group (monde means "world") and cut out the globe from the rectangular volume of the building, and created a public space in the resulting niche. The concave spherical media façade has become a city news screen.
The bureau aimed to express the independence and openness of the publications of the Le Monde group: this purpose is served by spacious halls in both parts of the building, from where there are views both into the interior of the building and outside.
Garden overlooking the river. Manuel Gautran
Bureau Manuelle Gautrand Architecture carefully calculated the area required for each publication of the group, and from the resulting rectangular volumes, the headquarters building was folded. Administrative departments are placed in a horizontal block that unites the building into a single whole. On its roof, overlooking the Seine, the authors of the project placed terraces with gardens and cafes.
Transparent media. Hardel + Le Bihan
This transparent solution underlines the integrity of Le Monde news outlets. The simple structure of the glazed frame, proposed by the architects, opens the workflows in the editorial offices to the views of the citizens. The project involves two detached buildings, united by a passage at the level of the second and third floors. Green terraces appear on the roof of the Hardel + Le Bihan crossing, just like their compatriot Gotran, but with a view of the station, not the river.
Lightweight designs. Shigeru Ban
The Ban project also involves the construction of two separate buildings. Apart from the passage on the upper floors, they are connected to each other by a common canopy that covers both the roof terraces and the area between the two parts of the headquarters.
David Chipperfield project
