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
.
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.

Full competition presentation

News

  • Créart'UP 2026-2027

    Application deadline: 01/07/2026

    Run by the Maison étudiante de la Ville de Paris, Créart’UP provides annual support for students and recent graduates (less than two years old) from Paris and the Île-de-France region wishing to develop an artistic or cultural project and gain professional experience in the arts and culture sector.

    Eligible fields are: music, theater, dance, visual arts, audiovisual, design, fashion, performance, digital cultural projects, and more broadly all innovative artistic and cultural projects.

  • Jacques Rougerie Foundation International Architecture and Innovation Competition 2026 - Académie des beaux-arts

    Application deadline: 24/09/2026

    Each year, this competition rewards architects, designers, engineers, artists and urban planners from all over the world who imagine bold and disruptive current or future architectural projects focusing on submersible land, sea and space, in order to build tomorrow’s new sustainable living environments at national and international level.

    The competition is free and open to students and professionals from all over the world.
      

  • Join the Research in Architecture post-master's program at the start of the new academic year

    Are you thinking of doing a thesis?

    Give yourself the opportunity to spend an extra year in a post-master’s program to confirm your choice and get acculturated to the world of architectural research with a first experience in a research team!

    This course is aimed at architects who have graduated in France or abroad, and hold a university master’s degree or equivalent in spatial issues, as well as master’s students (architecture or other) subject to obtaining their current degree.

  • Find out more about the State Architects and Planners (AUE) competition

    The DRAC d’Île-de-France and CROAIF are organizing two information events to promote the missions of State Architects and Planners (AUE) and increase the number of registrations for the AUE competition, a civil service management body.

    During these meetings, which will take place simultaneously by videoconference and in person at the Chapelle des Récollets (Paris 10th arrondissement), AUEs from the Ministries of Culture, Ecological Transition, the Armed Forces and Europe and Foreign Affairs will give presentations and answer participants’ questions on :

    • training courses available to prepare for the competition ;
    • the competition, tests and expectations (timetable, skills required, etc.) ;
    • jobs in government departments: urban renewal, landscape evolution, project management, heritage preservation, ENSA… ;
    • career development in the civil service.

    Both events will be hosted by Olivier Lerude, Head of the Regional Department of Architecture and Heritage Spaces (SRAEP) at DRAC Île-de-France.

  • Summer Academy in Architecture and Urban Studies - Villa Albertine: 6 of the 9 participating students are from La Villette!

    Following a call for applications, Inès Ben Yarou, Ana Candale, Mathieu Gaudé, Goumar Assia Goumar, Naa-Larlei Lakai and Nathan Oriou have been selected to take part in a nine-week program set up by Villa Albertine and the Cultural and Educational Service of the French Embassy in the United States, in partnership with Gustave Eiffel University.

    This program, supported by Saint-Gobain, offers them the opportunity to enjoy a unique cultural, human and professional experience.