The University will open an expanded center in Paris in 2022 to replace the current facility. The UChicago Center in Paris, which opened in 2003, was UChicago’s first global facility and is now one of four centers abroad.
The center will include a theater, laboratory, café, and green spaces, and will be connected to a mixed-use space not owned or operated by UChicago. It is being designed by the Chicago-based architecture firm Studio Gang in collaboration with Parisian architecture firm PARC Architectes. The selection of the center’s architect was a competitive process conducted by SEMAPA, the government agency responsible for developing the Rive Gauche neighborhood, where the center is located.
The site of the new center is part of a civic project to develop former industrial sections of Paris’s Left Bank, led by the French National Library and including various higher education institutions.
“The 13th arrondissement is a key district for higher education in Paris and the University of Chicago’s increased presence strengthens our strategy of maintaining universities and student facilities inside Paris,” said Jean-Louis Missika, the deputy mayor of Paris, in a statement.
Studio Gang previously collaborated with the University to design Campus North and Baker Dining Commons, which opened in 2016. The firm is also responsible for Hyde Park residential high-rises City Hyde Park and Solstice on the Park, completed in 2016 and 2018, respectively.
