Studio Gang to bring the University of Chicago to Paris

Jeanne Gang's practice is to bring the University of Chicago to Paris's 13th arrondissement in 2022. The campus will provide a total of 9,400 m², split between 2,700 m² of teaching space, 1,000 m² of retail and the remainder given over to 86 flats.

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Context and site

The Paris outpost of the University of Chicago will stand close to Station F, more precisely at the junction of rue des Grands Moulins and rue Jeanne Chauvin (see the map), 100 metres from the Inalco library of languages and civilisations. As with the neighbouring U-Care project, the building will span the railway tracks, a technical challenge with a number of consequences for the structural layout of the building.

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In an interview with the JDD (Journal du Dimanche), the university's provost John W. Boyer explained: "We hesitated between three capitals: London, Paris or Berlin. […] We preferred Paris for its extraordinary cultural and intellectual resources and its central position in the European Union. Paris is an extremely exciting city in which to teach and carry out research."

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The American university, with its 17,000 students, already has campuses in Hong Kong, Beijing and Delhi, and counts some 91 Nobel Prize winners among its affiliates. To establish itself in Paris, it ran a design competition involving 32 teams. Studio Gang was finally selected, and it has the added merit of being based in Chicago.

Studio Gang's architectural composition

The project forms a small block in its own right. The housing sits to the south, while the university occupies the north side, along the street leading to the Inalco library and also to the Grands Moulins university library. Jeanne Gang has arranged the classrooms around a large lightwell that leads users up to a planted roof terrace.

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The work of the landscape architects OLM gives the project, to be named "UChicago Center in Paris", its green character. The planting continues on the timber-clad façade, which alternates between opacity and transparency. Construction, due to start in summer 2020, will use sustainable materials in a low-carbon approach.