Snøhetta just celebrated the opening of another major building in the 13th arrondissement in Paris: the new headquarters for French media conglomerate Le Monde Group will be able to house all 1,600 employees together under one roof, gathering six newsrooms that used to be scattered across the city.

A striking feature of the 22,933 sqm / 246,848 sqft office building is
its arched midsection which elevates the structure just enough to create
a public plaza beneath it.

"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," explains the project description.

"Three gestural 'cuts' shape the building 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."

Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, commented: "I am happy the Le Monde Group has chosen the heart of the Paris Rive Gauche district as home for its new headquarters, and by doing so, contributing to the district’s transformation."

"The building is primarily about opening up in a time where fear and
uncertainty pushes our societies to increase barriers and strengthen
security enforcement," said Founding Partner of Snøhetta, Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, in reflection of the 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo Magazine's headquarters. "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."

The building design is the result of a competition Snøhetta won with local partner SRA Architectes in 2015.

Find more drawings in the image gallery and watch the video below to catch a glimpse of the building's interior.