RSHP has just won the Jean Moulin competition held in La Défense, Paris, to design a low-carbon mixed-use development. The competition is a part of the Paris business district initiative to become the world's first post-carbon business neighborhood, launching “Empreintes,” aiming to revolutionize five urban sites at the district’s periphery. Through collaboration with neighboring city centers, the scheme hopes to create various sustainable mixed-use properties.
The proposal for RSHP’s development envisions revitalizing an urban business zone, currently overshadowed by road infrastructure, and introducing a mixed-use development and a new public space. Linking La Défense to Puteaux’s city center, the project seeks to be a social and cultural landmark.
The mixed-use development is a two-story structure that features recreational, sporting, and entertainment venues that serve the La Défense neighborhood. A food court, an indoor market with a picturesque rooftop terrace, a large climbing gym, yoga areas, a café, and a pavilion for lively social and cultural events—all designed in collaboration with the locals—are included in the concept.
Between Puteaux and the Esplanade de La Défense, a green promenade cuts through pocket parks and public open spaces, promoting cycling lanes, pedestrian walkways, and transit choices. Along the center promenade, two distinct structures with flexible forms and green rooftops—one tall and thin building housing apartments and another longer, lower structure housing modern office spaces—are placed side by side.
The project represents a significant challenge, occupying as it does an interstitial site currently dominated by large-scale infrastructure and marked by radical changes of level that are presently almost impossible to navigate. Illustrating the fact that it is possible to transform such difficult environments into places where future generations can live and work well, delivering an inclusive, exemplary mixed-use low-carbon development in the process, is precisely why we consider this project so important. -- Stephen Barrett, Partner, RSHP
The Jean Moulin project by RSHP aims to reduce carbon emissions by 50%, considering both operational and embodied carbon. Natural aspects such as orientation, solar exposure, and access to light and vistas are optimized in building designs. Additionally, the design method includes creative energy-sharing schemes and technical component repurposing techniques. Due to the building's modularity and prefabricated wood constructions, the project aims for less initial carbon footprint, less construction waste, and less disturbance to the community.
Last year, the Architecture office RSHP unveiled the design for the Shenzhen - Hong Kong Innovation Integrated Service Centre, a 45-story tower in the Futian Free Trade Zone in south Shenzhen. Additionally, the studio won the international competition to design a new nearly net zero operational carbon business center in the city of Vilnius, Lithuania. The competition, organized by the Lithuanian Union of Architects and the Right Bank Development Fund, requested the design of a 19,200-square-meter office space in the city's Central Business District. In 2021, Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners won the design competition for the Qianhai Financial Holdings Headquarters Tower, another mixed-use commercial building in the center of the Qianhai district in Shenzhen, China.
