Architect’s Guide to Paris: 25 Must-See Buildings and Designs
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Paris has long been a city where architecture operates as both monument and experiment, where historic fabric and avant-garde visions coexist in dialogue. Today, this spirit is visible across a spectrum of projects: icons like the Grand Palais and Centre Pompidou are being reimagined for a new century, while new interventions at Sciences Po, Place de la Nation and Tolbiac are pioneering a distinctly Parisian aesthetic of sustainable wood architecture complete with bio-sourced insulation and planted terraces. Meanwhile, even small-scale insertions that evoke modernist innovators like Jean Prouvé — from a food kiosk beneath the Eiffel Tower to a rooftop pavilion at Galeries Lafayette — embody the city’s ability to transform everyday spaces into architectural theater.
The following projects, many of which have won accolades at Architizer’s A+Awards, chart the contours of a contemporary Paris that honors its monuments while pushing forward a new ecological urbanism. Together, they reaffirm the city as both a living heritage and a laboratory for the global future of design.
GRAND PALAIS
By Chatillon Architectes, Paris, France
Popular Choice Winner, Gallery & Exhibition Spaces, 13th Architizer A+Awards
Originally built for the 1900 Paris Exposition as a Beaux-Arts showcase of glass, steel and stone, the Grand Palais is now undergoing its most ambitious restoration in over a century. The project reopens monumental sight lines, restores natural ligh, and integrates new circulation to meet contemporary cultural demands while preserving its historic fabric.
Architect’s Detail: A digital heritage diagnosis — consisting of a 3D virtual model combining more than 3,000 archival drawings and point-cloud surveys — guided the precise reintegration of technical systems into the building’s complex volumes.
Hotel Elysée Montmartre
By Policronica, Paris, France
Jury Winner, Sustainable Interior Project, 13th Architizer A+Awards
Adjacent to the historic Elysée Montmartre concert hall, this 16-room boutique hotel transforms an abandoned shell into a monochromatic interior of eucalyptus wood, including custom furnishings. Designed and fabricated entirely by Policronica, the project reimagines an invasive species as a high-end material through innovative solar vacuum drying.
Architect’s Detail: Locally sourced eucalyptus, typically reserved for papermaking, was reengineered into durable joinery and furniture, showcasing how undervalued resources can drive sustainable architectural craft.
Pavillon Jardins
By Atelier du Pont, Paris, France
Jury Winner, Architecture +Workspace, 13th Architizer A+Awards
Photo by Frédéric Delangle
Set within Bernard Tschumi’s Parc de la Villette, this new operations hub aligns with the scale of his 1982 Folies while returning 53,820 square feet (5,000 square meters) of green space to the public. Interlocking timber and concrete spans create flexible interiors, anchored by a bioclimatic atrium that regulates light and temperature through low-tech strategies.
Architect’s Detail: Douglas fir from France’s central region forms the 17,660 cubic f00t (500 cubic meter) timber frame, paired with photovoltaic glazing and natural ventilation to minimize energy demand.
Fondation de Chine
By Coldefy, Paris, France
Jury Winner, Affordable Housing, 13th Architizer A+Awards
Photos by Cyrille Weiner
At the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, this residence and cultural center fuses the Chinese tulou — a circular communal residence from southern China — with the Haussmannian block, uniting two traditions around a shared courtyard typology. Brick façades anchor the form between Beijing and Paris, while differentiated north and south orientations optimize daylight, ventilation, and acoustic comfort for 300 student rooms.
Architect’s Detail: A perforated brick screen doubles as shading and ventilation, recalling Chinese latticework while echoing Paris’s masonry heritage.
5 Vertbois
By Moussafir Architectes, Paris, France
Jury Winner, Residential Adaptive Reuse; Finalist, Mixed Use (S<25,000 sq ft), 12th Architizer A+Awards
Photo by Hervé Abbadie
Within the protected Marais district, a 1970s concrete office block has been reimagined by stripping away interior linings to reveal its brutalist frame and rubble-stone party walls. New steel and glass insertions accentuate the raw concrete while supporting mixed residential, office and showroom uses within the preserved modernist grid.
Architect’s Detail: Over 90% of the original structure was retained, with a new 25-inch-thick (62 centimeter) façade integrating insulation, shutters and heating systems into a single layered assembly.
TALE OF TRANSFORMATION LA FANTAISIE HOTEL
By PETITDIDIERPRIOUX, Paris, France
Special Mention, Architecture +Renovation, 12th Architizer A+Awards
Reconfigured from an existing structure, this hotel is conceived as a retreat in the city center, with a glass-roofed restaurant overlooking a newly expanded garden. A zinc-clad façade acts as a luminous filter to the street, reinterpreting Paris’s distinctive material palette in a contemporary expression.
Architect’s Detail: The pre-patinated gray-green zinc references traditional Parisian rooftops while enhancing energy performance and daylight control for guest rooms.
EIFFEL KIOSK
By Franklin Azzi Architecture, Paris, France
At the base of Paris’s most visited monument, this prefabricated kiosk reimagines concession architecture as a transparent, rigorously detailed object inspired by Jean Prouvé’s modular houses. Rounded glass corners expand visibility, while a zinc roof recalls the city’s iconic 19th-century skyline.
Architect’s Detail: Built entirely off-site to minimize disruption, the modules combine ribbed aluminum, glass louvers and fold-down service tables, ensuring durability in one of Paris’s busiest public spaces.
La Maison de Beauté Carita L’Oréal-Luxe
By Le studio REV, Paris, France
Special Mention, Spa & Wellness, 12th Architizer A+Awards
In the heart of Faubourg Saint-Honoré, this transformation restores the original courtyard proportions of the historic Maison de Beauté, now enclosed beneath a monumental glass roof. Sheathed in a blend of stone finishes, sequence of arches and staircases redefines the atrium as both spatial epicenter and architectural identity for the brand.
Architect’s Detail: The raised glass canopy introduces controlled daylight into the atrium, while gypsum, marble and pink onyx articulate a tactile, materially rich interior.
Grande Arme-l1ve, restructuring modernism
By Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, Paris, France
Special Mention, Renovations & Additions, 12th Annual A+Awards
Near the Arc de Triomphe, the former Peugeot headquarters has been restructured into 382,120 square feet (35,500 square meters) of open offices, anchored by a 360-foot-long (110 meters) concrete façade. Alternating recessed and projecting box windows create a rhythmic depth, while recycled demolition material reinforces the project’s commitment to circular construction.
Architect’s Detail: The façade’s staggered windows establish a self-supporting order across the massive frame, reinterpreting the original 1960s structure with renewed plasticity and light.
ANNETTE K
By SEINE DESIGN, Paris, France
Floating on the Seine at Port de Javel Bas, this Nordic-style Olympic pool and wellness center recalls Paris’s historic river baths with a barge-like structure. Its suspended basin doubles as both swimming infrastructure and structural framework, while water reflections animate the interiors like an impressionist canvas.
Architect’s Detail: A rooftop running track encircles the complex, framing 360° views and channeling surplus pool heat to warm the decks below.
TOKO, WEBHELP’S HEADQUARTERS
By Franklin Azzi Architecture, Paris, France
Finalist, Mixed Use (L>25,000 sq ft), 11th Annual A+Awards
In the 17th arrondissement, this refurbishment opens a formerly closed building to the city with a glazed ground floor hosting public amenities and a central tree-filled patio. Flexible office floors above culminate in fully glazed extensions and landscaped terraces, introducing daylight and new social spaces across the urban block.
Architect’s Detail: The ground floor is re-leveled with the street to create transparency and access, while the patio integrates site-specific digital art by Hicham Berrada.
Nation
By TANK, Paris France
Photo by Julien Lanoo
At Place de la Nation, this office building reinterprets Haussmannian rhythms with contemporary façades and generous bow windows that frame urban views. Landscaped terraces cascade across levels, weaving greenery into the workspace and creating seasonal variation.
Architect’s Detail: A total of 6,460 square feet (600 square meters) of planted terraces use native species to enhance biodiversity while doubling as outdoor work and gathering spaces.
August Debouzy
By STUDIO RAZAVI + PARTNERS, Paris, France
Jury Winner, Commercial Interiors (<25,000 sq ft), 10th Architizer A+Awards
In a Haussmannian setting, this office project channels midcentury corporate design while prioritizing permanence over trend. A restrained palette of stone, curved timber and textiles creates dignified interiors. Meanwhile, the project set out to reuse of existing systems in addition to sourcing finishes locally and prioritizing carpet brands that recycle — all with the aim of reducing the project’s carbon footprint.
Architect’s Detail: The double-height lobby centers on a reception desk framed by stone floors, curved wood paneling and a handwoven Nepalese tapestry, inseparably weaving craftsmanship into the spatial composition.
Transformation of an office building into a wood and straw 139 student rooms
By NZI Architectes, Paris, France
Jury Winner, Architecture +Affordable Design; Finalist, Architecture +Adaptive Reuse; Finalist, Architecture +Sustainability, 10th Architizer A+Awards
This 47,360-square-foot 4,400-square-meter office-to-housing transformation demonstrates how low-tech, bio-sourced materials can drive large-scale rehabilitation. Prefabricated timber panels with straw insulation, sourced from Île-de-France, enabled rapid assembly with minimal carbon impact while delivering high-performance envelopes.
Architect’s Detail: Strategic demolitions opened the building’s core to sunlight and created a naturally lit garden level, turning the basement into communal space and reframing the block as livable, light-filled student housing.
Sciences Po
By MOREAU KUSUNOKI, Paris, France
Special Mention, Architecture +Learning; Special Mention, Higher Education & Research Facilities, 10th Architizer A+Awards
Inserted into a 17th-century monastery at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, this glazed pavilion redefines Sciences Po’s historic courtyards as interconnected civic spaces for exchange. Its pivoting windows and dynamic mirrored façades balance openness with reverence to heritage.
Architect’s Detail: The pavilion’s glass façades subtly reflect the monastery’s stone architecture, creating a dialogue of old and new while framing a transparent heart for the university’s urban campus.
175HAUSSMANN
By PCA-STREAM, Paris, France
Finalist, Office Building Mid Rise (5-15 floors), 9th Architizer A+Awards
This renovation near Place de l’Étoile restores coherence to a fragmented Haussmannian block with flexible offices, a triple-height atrium and a landscaped terrace. A hybrid glass crown elevates the ensemble into a contemporary urban beacon.
Architect’s Detail: The atrium acts as a central village square for employees, while the crystalline glass roof reframes the historic address with a new identity that merges heritage and modernity.
Timber Tower Le Berlier
By MOREAU KUSUNOKI, Paris, France
This 165-foot (50-meter) residential tower redefines Paris’s southeastern edge with a monumental timber frame that balances vertical presence with domestic scale. Charred and pre-weathered wood façades enclose units, each with private outdoor space and shared terraces that integrate greenery across all levels.
Architect’s Detail: The gridded timber façade acts as both structure and filter, mediating dense urban surroundings while supporting planted terraces that host biodiversity throughout the tower.
Poissonniers Sports Hall
By archi5, Paris, France
Finalist, Gyms & Recreation Centers, 9th Architizer A+Awards
On a former railway site at the city’s northern edge, this new sports facility doubles as an urban farm, embedding athletics and agriculture within a rising, terraced landscape. Its layered, hill-like form mediates between Paris’s dense fabric and the openness of the rail corridor, extending greenery across the building’s surfaces to create a porous, public-facing topography.
Architect’s Detail: Vegetation clings to the structure in ascending strata, blurring building and landscape while embodying Paris’s push toward ecological, multi-functional public infrastructure.
Calvin Klein Paris Headquarters
By Architecture Research Office, Paris, France
Popular Choice, Retail, 7th Architizer A+Awards
In a 19th-century cast-iron structure once home to the Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs, Calvin Klein’s Paris headquarters underscores Paris’s role as the global stage for fashion. Sterling Ruby’s vast canvases and installations transform the vaulted interior into a theatrical backdrop for Calvin Klein’s runway collections, where art, architecture, and couture converge.
Architect’s Detail: Wrapped in Ruby’s painted canvas, the mezzanine seems to float above the reflective epoxy floor, framing the historic iron supports as part of the spectacle.
GALERIES LAFAYETTE PAVILION
By Franklin Azzi Architecture, Paris, France
Perched atop Galeries Lafayette, this lightweight steel pavilion frames a 360° panorama of Paris while hosting seasonal dining and artistic interventions. Minimal structure meets decorative opulence through Pierre Marie’s coral- and seaweed-inspired textile hangings.
Architect’s Detail: Prefabricated steel modules allow the pavilion to be dismantled and reassembled seasonally with minimal impact on the historic rooftop.
Tolbiac Apartments
By Atelier Architecture Vincent Pareira, Paris, France
At the junction of Tolbiac and Chevaleret streets, this mixed-use housing project replaces former workshops with four blocks unified by a shifting grid of timber balconies. Concrete structure meets darkened larch cladding, recalling Paris’s industrial past while interstitial terraces, shared “nests,” and a panoramic rooftop establish a new social topography.
Architect’s Detail: Balcony posts subtly shift laterally and vertically at each level, animating the façade and enlarging outdoor spaces as the building rises.
LABORDE
By PCA-STREAM, Paris, France
Popular Choice Winner, Architecture +Workspace, 7th Architizer A+Awards
On Place Saint-Augustin, the new headquarters of France’s leading international law firm bridges centuries of Parisian architecture, uniting a restored 18th-century wing with a fully rebuilt glass-clad office block. A monumental central pavilion serves as the connective heart, framing a workplace conceived as a “village square” with gardens, terraces, and rooftop agriculture.
Architect’s Detail: Nearly 48,440 square feet (4,500 square meters) of outdoor spaces reconnect the dense urban site with sky and nature, turning planted terraces and walkways into active extensions of the workplace.
Gaumont-Pathé Alésia Cinémas
By MANUELLE GAUTRAND ARCHITECTURE, Paris, France
Finalist, Architecture +Façade, 6th Architizer A+Awards
In the city where the Lumière brothers premiered the first motion pictures, this renovated cinema reasserts Paris’s role as a global capital of film. Stacked theaters form a sculptural interior, while a pleated façade clad in programmable LEDs animates the street like a cinematic screen. By day, visitors move through a triple-height atrium beneath tiered auditoria; by night, the luminous exterior transforms the building into both landmark and gathering place.
Architect’s Detail: The façade’s folded ribbons alternate between glass and metal, embedding thousands of LEDs that project imagery across the city and even under the canopy at street level.
Philharmonie de Paris, Grande Salle
By Ateliers Jean Nouvel and L’Observatoire International, Paris, France
Jury Winner, Architecture +Light, 5th Architizer A+Awards
Set within Parc de la Villette, Jean Nouvel’s Philharmonie redefines Paris’s symphonic tradition, standing in deliberate contrast to the gilded Palais Garnier with its fractured metallic skin and sculptural form. Inside, the vineyard-style Grand Salle envelops 2,400 seats around the stage, where amber light embedded in floating “clouds” merges with acoustics of extraordinary precision to create a fully immersive concert experience.
Architect’s Detail: Custom LEDs embedded in the ceiling’s sculptural panels warm the hall with a sunset glow, uniting architecture, light, and sound into a single resonant field.
Rue Ville l’Evêque – Timber in the City
By Baumschlager Eberle Architekten, Paris, France
Near La Madeleine, this office renovation reactivates Paul La Mache’s mid-century design with new spatial clarity, improved circulation, and courtyards reimagined as vertical gardens. Timber frameworks extend greenery onto terraces, proving even compact urban sites can host climate-conscious design.
Architect’s Detail: A three-dimensional greening strategy transforms roof and courtyard surfaces into planted micro-landscapes, enhancing comfort while reducing the building’s environmental footprint.
Centre Pompidou 2030
By MOREAU KUSUNOKI, Paris, France
The forthcoming transformation of the Centre Pompidou reinterprets Piano and Rogers’ 1977 machine-for-culture, restoring its porosity and reactivating it as a living extension of the city. Moreau Kusunoki’s design, informed by Cedric Price’s lineage of adaptable cultural infrastructure, treats Pompidou as an evolving urban organism rather than a fixed monument. Visitors to the city in the coming years may not be able to enter, but little by little progress is being made on this ambitious restoration.
Architect’s Detail: Reuse strategies and a restrained material palette respect the original chromatic codes while positioning the building as heir to Paris’s experimental cultural utopias.
The latest edition of “Architizer: The World’s Best Architecture” — a stunning, hardbound book celebrating the most inspiring contemporary architecture from around the globe — is now available for pre-order. Secure your copy today.
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