28.05.2026

THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES TOWER REACHES 16 OF 21 FLOORS

The structural works of the National Archives extension tower at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine have reached the 16th of 21 floors. The frame is set for completion in August 2026, built to a demanding rhythm of one new level every eight to nine days. The structure uses low-carbon concrete produced within a ten-kilometre radius of the site, meeting the E3C1 level of the French government's E+C− label (Énergie Positive et Réduction Carbone) — a tier that pairs strong energy performance with reduced embodied carbon. Façade installation begins on 10 June 2026, starting on the lower floors while the final structural levels are still rising above. The two operations now advance together, the building gaining its height and its skin at the same time.

04.04.2026

THE KI RISES TO TEN STOREYS AS THE FAÇADE TAKES SHAPE

The Ki has reached its tenth storey in Lyon Part-Dieu, with the structural frame nearing its full height and the first façade bays now installed on the lower levels. The cladding settles the questions worked out earlier with the SPL: the vertical rhythm facing the street, the angled columns that lift the building at its base and open the ground to the city, the materials that decide how the block sits among its neighbours. What was a concrete skeleton months ago now reads as a building with a face. The Ki is set for completion in 2026. 

10.07.2025

THE KI REACHES SUPERSTRUCTURE AS FAÇADE TALKS WITH THE SPL ADVANCE

Construction of The Ki has moved above ground in Lyon Part-Dieu: with the foundations complete, the first concrete cores are now rising on site. The milestone coincided with a working meeting with the SPL on façade materiality and how the building meets the city around it 

15.02.2025

A MONUMENTAL MURAL BY PIETER VERMEERSCH FOR THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES EXTENSION

Belgian artist Pieter Vermeersch has been commissioned to create a monumental mural for the extension of the French National Archives at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine. Titled Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, the work is a large-scale painted gradient applied directly to the metal panels of the building's western façade — roughly 72.6 metres high and 8.2 metres wide, composed of 468 hand-mixed colour tones that shift gradually across its full height. Each tone follows an empirical mixing method set against a rational system of division. The gradient reads the building against its surroundings and, in its slow shift of colour, mirrors what an archive does: holding the past, working in the present, reaching toward the future. The commission is part of the extension project led from l'AUC by Contexō founding partner Miguel Serrano.

https://www.pietervermeersch.be/

10.01.2025

CONSTRUCTION BEGINS ON THE TOWER EXTENSION OF THE FRENCH NATIONAL ARCHIVES 

Construction has started on the extension to the French National Archives at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, in the north of the Paris region — the largest archive complex in France, designed by Massimiliano Fuksas and opened to the public in January 2013. With the existing storage set to reach full capacity by 2030, the extension answers a real and dated need for space. The French Ministry of Culture launched the competition in January 2022 and announced the winning proposal, by the Paris architecture and urbanism office l'AUC, in June 2022. Miguel Serrano, founding partner of Contexō, led the competition team within l'AUC and went on to direct the study and development phases. Three years on, the works are underway, with completion expected in 2027.

https://www.oppic.fr/article150.html

22.11.2024

SYMBIOSIS EXHIBITED IN TILBURG WITH A MUNICIPAL WORKSHOP ON ITS DEVELOPMENT 

Contexō's Symbiosis was exhibited at LocHal, the converted railway hall in Tilburg, in an evening organised by architecture centres CAST and BLASt. Alongside the exhibition, the studio joined a discussion and workshop with the municipality on how the winning Europan 17 proposal moves from competition idea to a buildable project — the site, the programme, the actors who need to align for it to advance.

13.02.2024

BAUWELT FEATURES CONTEXŌ'S WORK 

German architecture magazine Bauwelt has published Contexō's work in issue 4.2024, which examines the results of Europan 17 under the theme of crisis-proof planning strategies. The studio's contribution, Tabula non Rasa, sets out the thinking behind Symbiosis: a position that treats the existing fabric of a site as material to build on rather than clear away. ‍

‍https://www.bauwelt.de/4.2024-4058749.html

06.01.2024

19.12.2023

DEMOLITION BEGINS ON SITE FOR THE KI IN LYON

Demolition has started on the Lyon Part-Dieu site that will become The Ki, clearing the existing structure to make way for the new 31,150 m² mixed-use development. The works mark the first physical step of a project that has moved from competition to construction over nearly a decade. Set in the heart of one of France's largest business districts, beside the Galeries Lafayette and the station esplanade, The Ki replaces an obsolete office block with a denser, mixed programme stitched into the surrounding city. 

17.12.2023

SYMBIOSIS WINS 1ST PRIZE AT EUROPAN 17

Contexō's Symbiosis has been awarded 1st Prize for the Tilburg site at Europan 17, the European competition for young architects and urban designers. The brief asked how living and working might be rethought on a former railway zone — a question Contexō answered with a timber prototype organised on a modular grid, where housing, workspaces and shared places sit together and reshape over time as households change. The design doesn't dictate, it accommodates. The team travelled to Tilburg for the results ceremony, where the winning proposals across the Dutch sites were announced. Symbiosis remains the clearest test of what the studio's approach produces at full scale.

24.10.2023

NICOLAS GUSTIN TEACHES FIRST-YEAR ARCHITECTURE STUDIO AT LISAA PARIS

‍Nicolas Gustin teaches first-year architecture at LISAA Paris, where students work through ideas in physical models before they reach a brief. The pieces shown here come from an experimental exercise: each model tests a single architectural principle — stacking, suspension, balance, the behaviour of a material — using only cardboard, foam, acetate and found objects. Working by hand at this stage trains the eye and the judgement that drawing software can't. The approach mirrors how the studio itself begins every project: from a blank page, testing options in the open before settling on a direction. 

‍https://www.lisaa.com/

01.01.2015

ARKKITEHTI PUBLISHES NICOLAS GUSTIN'S DIPLOMA WORK IN ITS "YOUNG IDEAS" ISSUE 

‍Arkkitehti (Finnish Architectural Review) has featured Nicolas Gustin's diploma work in issue 1/2015, "Young Ideas" — a number devoted to young architects writing about what matters to them. From Urban Villages to Density, his University of Oulu thesis, takes Shanghai as its subject: a city where rapid growth swallows the older urban-village fabric and replaces it with towers cut off from the ground. Rather than choose between density and the village, the project proposes a typology that holds both — small, human-scaled units stacked into a system that grows with the neighbourhood. It is the early form of a question that still drives the practice. 

https://www.ark.fi/en/2015/01/

13.12.2014

TOWARD EQUITABLE CITIES, ANTWERP REAL ESTATE CONGRESS 2014

‍Nicolas Gustin took the stage at Antwerp Real Estate, the annual congress organised by Voka – Kamer van Koophandel Antwerpen-Waasland, to address an audience of developers, investors and public actors. The talk, Toward Equitable Cities, drew on his work in Asia's fastest-growing metropolises to question how cities absorb rapid urbanisation — who benefits from density, and who is left out. The argument set a why-how-what framework against the reality of informal growth, the same line of inquiry that now runs through research and through Contexō's reading of context as a network of social, economic and political forces.