Studios Architecture Paris and Selldorf Architects Win the International Competition to Transform the Louvre
The Louvre in Paris this morning announced the winning team to transform the famous museum, which has recently been plagued by theft, overcrowding, staff strikes, and the resignation of its director. Led by Studios Architecture Paris, the French office of an international collective founded in 1985, with a presence in New York City, Washington D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Toronto, the team includes New York based Selldorf Architects, which recently completed similar overhauls of the Frick Collection in New York and the Sainsbury Wing of London’s National Gallery. Selldorf Architects is also responsible for the scenography and museography. Base Landscape Architecture is in charge of the landscape and urban planning components.
President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron announced the competition, along with the museum’s then-director, Laurence des Cars, in early 2025 at the Louvre. A shortlist of five firms was revealed in October, following a first round of competition in June that attracted over 100 entrants. Another New York City-based office, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, was among the finalists, in association with French firm Architecture Studio and Paris-based landscape designers TER. Other finalists included Great Britain’s AL_A, headed by Amanda Levete, in a team of French urbanists, landscape designers, and exhibition designers, while Japan was represented by both Sou Fujimoto—which has offices in Tokyo and Paris and was collaborating with a French exhibition designer and landscape firm—and SANAA, which had teamed up with French office Dubuisson and British landscape designers Dan Pearson Studio.
Des Cars, the first female president of the Louvre, resigned under pressure in February following the theft of over $100 million in jewels and other security, infrastructural, and personnel misfortunes. After months of deliberation and delay, Macron revealed the winning team today in the presence of the minister of culture, Catherine Pégard, and the mayor of Paris, Emmanuel Grégoire. Nearly 40 years after the Grand Louvre project and its iconic pyramid, designed by I.M. Pei, this plan addresses a significant need for the museum’s renovation and transformation: to ensure the long term preservation of the Louvre’s architectural heritage, to better protect and share its collections, and to adapt the institution to the expectations of its visitors.
The scheme calls for a second public entrance to ease overcrowding. It also includes a separate exhibition space for the most famous item in the museum’s collection, the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci, allowing visitors to see it without going through the rest of the museum.
The winning team, according to a statement, brings a respectful yet contemporary impetus to the entrance project via the Colonnade. Constructing a vision that encompasses urban, architectural, and landscape dimensions, the proposal establishes an elegant link between the city, the palace, and the museum, while unfolding a sensitive geography of movement—one attentive to the visitor’s experience from the immediate surroundings to the museum’s interior. The marked symmetry around the East-West axis and the clarity of the circulation paths guide the overall composition.
Already the most visited museum in the world, the changes are expected to increase capacity by over three million visitors a year.
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