In an age when data and exchanges are losing their material character, when work is being done at home, and when decentralized university villages are being built, the ground-breaking decision by the Condorcet Campus to make use of the Plaine-Saint-Denis, an area undergoing far-reaching changes in the heart of the Île-de-France metropolis, is a meaningful one. By bringing together those élite establishments known as “grandes écoles” (EHESS, EPHE, Ecole des Chartes), along with universities (Paris 1, Paris 3, Paris 8 and Paris 13) and research laboratories around the Human Sciences and shared amenities, the Campus is being turned into an active principle underpinning the re-invention of a whole district, giving rise to a specific type of urbanity and a new kind of city life.

The urban proposal put forward by the group of designers headed by TVK is organized around an encompassing outer area, creating by way of a void the union between the city and the Campus, unifying the various ingredients of the scientific project, and constructing a powerful identity at the same time as a centrality in the heart of the Plaine-Saint-Denis. By incorporating areas of thoroughfare and gathering within a place with a high identity value, the plan’s intent is to encourage the circulation of ideas and bolster the spirit of convergence that constitutes the scientific project.

The INED and the EPCS are situated in the central area of the Campus, beside the Main Documentary Facility. These buildings thus form a programmatic environment that is at once specific, prestigious and permanent, definitively established in phase 1 of the construction of the Campus. Area 2, which thus accommodates outstanding amenities and institutions, becomes a very specific place in the Campus, whose plan is an exceptional one.

In this very open context, the buildings enhance the Main Documentary Facility and dialogue with the adjacent streets (rue des Fillettes and rue Waldeck Rochet), forming object-like buildings, surrounded by void, and easily walked around. To the west they face the Square Condorcet, an unobstructed pedestrian space, formed by passages running a cross lawns which constitute their forecourt. Enhanced by this openness, they have an undeniable monumental function, related to the prestige of the institutions they house.