Jean-François Renaud: Recent Work

Jean-François Renaud is a Paris-based architect. He is a co-founder of Babin + Renaud and a professor at École Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Paris-Belleville. He has previously taught at architecture schools in Lille, Marseille, and Nantes.

Babin + Renaud was established by Jean-François Renaud and Eric Babin in 1995 after winning a European competition for a social housing project in Rheims. For the past 20 years, they have developed a body of work that is as grounded in context as it is abstract and theoretical. With a firm belief that a building should occupy a proper place in its setting and by perfecting new architectural types derived from analyzing each program, Babin + Renaud carry out projects that vary in both scale and program, e.g. housing, in complex social fabrics on symbolically significant sites such as Paris’ Les Batignolles, Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen. They also tackle mixed-use projects, office buildings, and public facilities such as the recently completed Les Quinconces, a cultural center in Le Mans.

Babin + Renaud has received several awards:  in 2015 alone, they have been awarded the Prix de l’Equerre d’Argent from the “Moniteur”; the International Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum and the European Urban Centre for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies, The Trophée Eiffel, and two honorable mentions for The Plan Award.