Babin + Renaud

Eric Babin and Jean-François Renaud are following a singular pathway calmly, and to date unobtrusively, delivering rigorous and engaged products free of the constraints of fashion.

They founded their agency nearly twenty years ago after winning a European-wide competition that enabled them to deliver a project consisting of some one-hundred accommodations in Rheims.

Since then they have developed an architecture that is grounded as much in its context as it is abstract and theoretical. Holding dear the proper place that a building should occupy in its setting and perfecting new architectural types derived from analyzing the brief, Babin + Renaud carry out projects of scale with highly varied briefs, e.g. housing, of course, in complex social fabrics on the edges of Paris (Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen), on symbolically significant sites such as Paris' Les Batignolles or future sites like at the Porte de Montmartre. They also tackle mixed projects, office buildings or extensive public facilities like the future cultural center at Les Jacobins which the agency will be delivering by early summer.

Now ensconced at the heart of Paris' 11th arrondissement, the agency employs some twenty collaborators and has projects throughout France. For the past several years Éric Babin and Jean-François Renaud have also been teaching, initially in Lille, Marseilles,Nantes and Rouen, they are presently teaching in Paris' Belleville.