Le Monde Headquarters...and its windows!

The headquarters of  Le Monde at 67–69 Avenue Pierre-Mendès-France in the 13th arrondissement is certainly a building with plenty of windows.

Designed by the Norwegian architecture practice Snøhetta and completed in 2020, the building is made up of seven floors and rises above the railway tracks beside Gare d'Austerlitz . Its distinctive outer skin consists of around 20,000 glass panels , with different levels of transparency creating the pixelated appearance of the facade.

Which brings us to the practical question: you wouldn't want to have the window-cleaning contract for this building,  or would you?

The glass isn't just there for appearance. The architects designed the varying degrees of transparency, translucency and opacity to create changing effects as the light moves across the facade.

The building also has an unusual structure. It is essentially a bridge building , spanning an 80-meter-wide public space above the railway lines. The design was partly dictated by the site, where the central section could not be built on.

It opened as the new home of the Le Monde Group in 2020, bringing the newspaper and several other publications together under one roof.

More on the building's architecture here.

Happy Wednesday! 

“Somehow, Paris always manages to be beautiful, even when it's just quietly being itself.”

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Part of the “Windows & Balconies of Paris” Series

Each Wednesday, we share a glimpse of Paris through its windows and balconies — the quiet details that give the city its rhythm and romance.

Browse the full series

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