Bjarke Ingels Group and French practice OFF win research building in central Paris

The Bjarke Ingels Group has won the job of designing a 15,000sq m research centre for the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in Paris.

The practice, part of a team that includes Parisian practice OFF, beat MVRDV and Mario Cucinella.

The new multidisciplinary research centre, Paris PARC, will be part of the Sorbonne universities and is located between Jean Nouvel’s Institut du Monde Arabe and the open park of the UPMC’s Jussieu campus.

The facility will bring together academic scholars and the business community, while re-connecting the university physically and visually with the city of Paris.

BIG founder Bjarke Ingels said: “As a form of urban experiment the Paris PARC is the imprint of the pressures of its urban context. Wedged into a super dense context – in terms of space, public flows and architectural history – the PARC is conceived as a chain of reactions to the various external and internal forces acting upon it.”