2025 Architectural Hopefuls Competition
Entries: from 15/10 to 17/11/2025
Kick-off meeting: 20/11/2025
Subject 2025: ADAPTATION AND MITIGATION: ANTICIPATING AND ACTING IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE
This competition, organized each year by BNP PARIBAS REAL ESTATE since 2008, aims to: ▪ Combine its sponsorship activities in favor of architecture and the young talents of tomorrow with a support initiative aimed at young people. ▪ Encourage architecture students to reflect on and raise awareness of current architectural issues, particularly in terms of sustainable development. ▪ Promote synergies between these students and professionals in the sector (outside the classroom).
Climate change is an indisputable reality. Scientific studies predict that France could experience an average rise of +2.7°C by 2050*, transforming its temperate climate into a subtropical one. In both urban and suburban areas, our cities, increasingly mineralized and exposed, will have to cope with extreme temperatures, heat waves, natural disasters, droughts and intense rainfall
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Against this backdrop, the real estate sector faces a major challenge: adapting to unstable climatic conditions and protecting residents and users.
It’s not just a question of reducing our carbon footprint, but also of adapting existing buildings and neighborhoods to these upheavals, in a coherent approach where adaptation and mitigation go hand in hand.
In addition to technical adaptation, we also need to support changes in behavior. Intensifying uses, sharing spaces differently, imagining places that are more sober and flexible: architecture is becoming a lever for cultural and social transformation as much as for climate change.
This year’s competition invites students to focus on vacant commercial buildings (nearly 9 million m² of office space are currently empty in France, 2 million of which are considered wastelands). These buildings, located in a variety of urban and suburban contexts, provide an ideal testing ground for rethinking the city and its uses. Participants will be asked to select a vacant commercial property and propose a transformation adapted to the climatic risks specific to its location in France. Heatwaves, floods, drought, or any other relevant hazard: each project will have to propose adaptation and mitigation solutions.
News
Acier 2026 Competition: Reversible(s) - Building for transformation
Closing date for entries: May 29, 2026 at midnight
Jury: June 30, 2026
Award ceremony: October 2026
Prize: 5,000 euros to be divided between the winnersThe competition, organized by ConstruirAcier, is open to students, alone or in teams, at architecture or engineering schools in 2025-2026.
Pierre 2026 competition: Hybridized stone
Registration deadline: 01/2026
Project submission deadline: 03/05/2026 at 23:00
Jury and awards ceremony: 11/06/2026The “Concours pierre. Construire en pierre structurelle” is open to all students in higher education, whether individually or in teams, with the requirement that each team include a student from a higher education institution awarding a state diploma in architecture or landscape architecture.
It is organized by the École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Val de Seine and its matériauthèque, in partnership with the Syndicat national des industries de roches ornementales et de construction (SNROC) and the Association Les pierres sauvages de Belcastel.
The jury, chaired by architect Boris Bouchet, will award the following prizes to the projects it deems most relevant:
- 1st prize: €1,500
- 2nd prize: €1,200
- 3rd prize: €1,000
Imagine the rail stops of tomorrow
Since 2015, the Bon Sens Paysan collective (an associative design office made up of citizens from various backgrounds with or without ties to the world of railways and architecture) has been spearheading the Limousin Tram Train project. More generally, this project is part of the Metropolitan Regional Express Services (SERM), also known colloquially as “metropolitan RER”.
To this end, the association has been working for several years on a project to explore the possibility of adapting the numerous railroad lines that irrigate Limoges and its catchment area, in order to create a structuring network of five train lines serving the main hubs of the conurbation and linking them more effectively to the surrounding towns and villages. The project aims to find solutions for decarbonizing mobility in rural and peri-rural areas, a current blind spot in public policy.
To take this prospecting work a step further, the BSP collective is launching its first national architecture and urban planning competition for three stations on the Limoges rail hub, as part of the Périgord-Limousin RER project.
Making 2025
Application deadline: 17/11/2025
The Pavillon de l’Arsenal is launching the 2025 edition of its FAIRE call for projects, dedicated to urban, architectural and landscape design and innovation, aimed at all those wishing to invent new ways of making the city in Greater Paris.
This call for projects aims to encourage young designers and recent structures, by awarding a grant to 8 winners, including at least 1 young graduate or student prize.
Schools Concrete Trophy
Entry deadline: 31/10/2025
The Trophée béton Écoles is organized by the Bétocib, CIMbéton and Fondation École Française du Béton associations, under the patronage of the French Ministry of Culture, in partnership with Maison de l’architecture Île-de-France, AMC magazine and the AAIIA association.Its aim is to reveal future professionals, sponsor them and offer them visibility at the dawn of their professional lives.
Trophée Qualitel Jeunes Talents Architecture 2025
Application deadline: 01/09/2025 inclusive
Organized annually since 2010 by the QUALITEL Association, this competition rewards a housing construction or renovation project devised by architecture students during their studies, focusing on quality of use, environmental performance and innovation.
