Le Monde Group Headquarters, France
Designed by Snøhetta, “Le Monde Building” provides newsrooms for each of the French media company Le Monde Group's publications, under the same roof in Paris. The 80-metre-long building comprises two seven-storey cantilevering volumes at either end, married by the sweeping arch that is made from a network of steel. According to Snøhetta, this was "a highly demanding engineering task" as the building "weighs more than the Eiffel Tower".
The arched shape of the 23,000-square-metre office evolved in response to the conditions and challenges of the site: it is situated just above the railways and platforms of the Gare d’Austerlitz which makes the creation of a technical basement impossible. The first challenge, therefore, was to construct a building where the entire technical system of the building would be cleverly incorporated into the structure of the building itself. The second challenge was that the site could only carry a specific amount of weight, and only on the two extremities of the site
Inside, the headquarters comprise a mix of open-plan and informal workspaces, alongside over 100 private offices and over forty meeting rooms. There is also a library, an archive area, a mix of food and retail services as well as a two-story auditorium. The two upper levels of the building are dedicated exclusively to Le Monde, which is the Le Monde Group's main publication. At the heart of these two levels is an open space with a spiralling staircase, designed so that employees can easily collaborate across the newsroom.
The building’s pixelated outer skin is composed of more than 20,000 pixelated glass tiles, helps to unify the building. These tiles vary in transparency and are arranged to maximise outward views and light inside the offices. Le Monde Group Headquarters was completed in 2020.
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