RSHP Architecture Wins Rives-Défense Competition in Paris

RSHP architecture has won the international competition to redevelop the Rives-Défense site in La Défense, Paris’s primary business district. The winning proposal transforms an 8-hectare site at the district’s western edge into a low-carbon mixed-use neighborhood, reconnecting La Défense to the Seine River and reestablishing the area’s identity along one of Paris’s most significant urban axes.

What Is the Rives-Défense Project?

The Rives-Défense site occupies a strategic position at the entrance to La Défense, directly along the historic axis that extends westward from the Louvre through central Paris. Commissioned by Paris La Défense, the project brief called for a comprehensive urban transformation of the 8-hectare waterfront site, which currently suffers from poor connectivity, underused buildings, and road infrastructure that blocks views and access to the Seine River.

The competition attracted nearly 30 international submissions before a five-team shortlist was invited to present their visions. Paris La Défense ultimately selected the Franco-British consortium led by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP), whose proposal was announced publicly during MIPIM 2026 in Cannes. The jury cited the team’s complementary expertise, the strength of its references, and the boldness of its regeneration vision as decisive factors.

The RSHP-Led Team: Who Is Behind the Proposal?

The winning consortium brings together a multidisciplinary group of specialists across architecture, urban planning, landscape, engineering, and environmental consultancy. RSHP architects serve as the lead design practice, responsible for the overarching architectural and urban vision. Working alongside them are:

• Atelier SOIL — co-architect and urban planner
• Altitude 35 — landscape architect
• Arcadis — engineering consultant
• Atelier Franck Boutté — environmental consultant
• Urban Eco and Mobius — additional specialist consultants

Paris La Défense CEO Pierre-Yves Guice described the site as offering “one of the most significant development opportunities of the decade in the greater Paris region,” and praised the winning team’s vision for addressing both the site’s urban complexity and its environmental ambitions.

The Design Vision: A Metropolitan Clearing Along the Seine

The central concept driving the RSHP proposal is described by the design team as a “metropolitan clearing.” Rather than imposing a new skyline, the scheme works with the existing urban grain, stepping building heights down from the taller towers aligned along the historic La Défense axis toward the Seine, creating a graduated transition from the dense business district to the river’s edge.

RSHP director Stephen Barrett, who is serving as lead architect and urbanist on the project, described the core ambition plainly: the river should no longer read as a boundary, but as the living foundation of the district. The current situation — where road infrastructure and existing buildings effectively hide the Seine from view and cut off pedestrian access — is a central problem the design sets out to resolve. New access points and restored sightlines would reopen what Barrett called “long-lost views” of the river.

Senior associate and project architect Nicola Carnevali added that the team’s ambition is to “reveal the site’s uniqueness by transforming and amplifying what already exists,” preserving what distinguishes the site today while creating conditions for its future evolution. This philosophy of working with inherited urban fabric rather than against it is central to the RSHP office’s broader approach to urban regeneration.

Rehabilitation, Reuse, and New Construction

One of the proposal’s most significant commitments is its prioritization of rehabilitation and reuse over wholesale demolition. The design approach focuses on retaining existing structures that contribute to the site’s architectural and urban identity, extending and adapting them where needed, and introducing new construction only where it genuinely adds value to the mix.

This strategy has both environmental and urban planning benefits. Retaining and adapting buildings reduces embodied carbon compared to demolition and full reconstruction. It also helps maintain continuity of character in a neighborhood that, despite its challenges, has an established physical presence that can be built upon rather than erased.

The programmatic mix proposed for the site reflects Paris La Défense’s broader ambition to transition La Défense from a single-purpose office district into a genuine urban neighborhood. The scheme incorporates housing, workplaces, public spaces, and a large-scale hotel hub. This diversity of uses is intended to activate the neighborhood across different times of day and different days of the week, reducing the dormancy that currently affects many parts of La Défense outside of office hours.

Bioclimatic Design and Public Space

The landscape strategy plays a central role in the RSHP proposal. New public squares and extensive planting are distributed throughout the site, designed not just as amenity space but as functional bioclimatic environments. In a dense urban context, these green areas are intended to improve microclimatic conditions — moderating urban heat, managing surface water, and creating shade and shelter that make outdoor space genuinely usable throughout the year.

This approach reflects a shift in how landscape architects are integrating environmental performance into urban regeneration schemes. Rather than treating greenery as decoration applied after the fact, the Rives-Défense proposal treats planted areas as structural components of the urban environment, carrying environmental loads alongside their social and aesthetic functions.

Why This Architecture Competition Matters for Urban Design

The Rives-Défense urban design competition is significant beyond its immediate site. It is part of a broader ambition by Paris La Défense to position the district as a model for the sustainable transformation of postwar European business districts. Large office-dominated zones built during the mid-to-late 20th century are facing increasing pressure across Europe to adapt: their monoculture of use, poor public realm, and heavy infrastructure burdens make them difficult places to inhabit outside of working hours.

The competition process itself attracted close to 30 international submissions — a figure that Paris La Défense’s leadership described as a testament to the exceptional nature of the site and the scale of the opportunity. For the architecture and urban design profession, high-profile urban design competitions like Rives-Défense provide a rare opportunity to work at a scale where design decisions shape entire neighborhoods rather than individual buildings.

Understanding how architectural competitions drive innovation is useful context here: multidisciplinary teams like the RSHP consortium are specifically assembled to address the full complexity of such briefs, drawing on expertise across architecture, landscape, engineering, and environmental consultancy to develop proposals that can respond to technical, social, and ecological demands simultaneously. You can explore more on how architectural competitions drive innovation in urban design on illustrarch.

RSHP’s Broader Portfolio and Urban Approach

Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) is a London-based practice with a Paris office that has been working in France for decades. The firm’s track record in large-scale urban and infrastructure projects is extensive, spanning the Pompidou Centre, Terminal 5 at Heathrow, the Lloyd’s Building, and a series of major international airport and urban planning commissions. In recent years, RSHP has increasingly focused on urban regeneration and low-carbon design at district scale, with La Défense emerging as a key site for that work.

The rshp office’s approach to urban design is characterized by a commitment to what might be called legible urbanism: proposals that are structurally clear, spatially generous, and designed to evolve over time with changing needs. The Rives-Défense proposal fits this pattern, with its graduated height profile, mixed uses, and emphasis on adaptability and public realm as the foundations of a long-term urban vision.

For those interested in how the world’s largest architecture firms approach complex urban projects, illustrarch’s overview of the largest architectural firms in the world provides useful context on how firms like RSHP position themselves in the global market.

What Comes Next for Rives-Défense?

The competition win marks the beginning of a long design and delivery process. Urban projects of this scale typically move through multiple phases of planning, consultation, and phased construction over many years. Paris La Défense’s approach with the “Empreintes” initiative — which Rives-Défense is part of — has emphasized collaborative development with local stakeholders, ensuring that the transformation of each site reflects shared ambitions rather than top-down imposition.

The project will need to navigate the practical complexities of working with existing structures, coordinating multiple landowners and tenants, and delivering a coherent urban vision across a phased construction timeline. These are precisely the conditions in which multidisciplinary teams with experience in complex urban sites, like the RSHP consortium, are best placed to operate.

For those following architecture competitions and urban design in France, the Rives-Défense project will be one of the most closely watched urban regeneration schemes in Greater Paris over the coming decade. You can also explore best architecture concepts for urban design to understand the principles shaping projects like this one, and follow current architecture competitions for opportunities in similar urban design categories.

For more on RSHP’s official project information, visit the RSHP website. Full project coverage is available on ArchDaily, and the official Paris La Défense announcement can be found on the Paris La Défense website. Additional reporting is available from The Architects’ Journal.