Jean-Philippe Pargade qualified as an architect from the UP6 school of architecture in Paris in 1972, and as an urban planner from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées in 1973.

He is a member of France’s Académie d’Architecture and was governmental architectural advisor for, successively, the departments of the Vienne, Loiret, Aube and Pyrénées-Atlantiques.

In 1980 he founded the practice in Paris and won the Palmarès de l’Habitat prize for his Ilot des Patriarches development in Paris.

He then went on to exercise his creativity on large public facilities: research centres, teaching campuses, hospitals, housing, offices.

He won the Prix Départemental d’Ile et Vilaine for his Central Lending Library in Rennes, and then Gold Medal from the Académie d’Architecture for the hospital complex in Mantes-la-Jolie. In 2005 he published Mutations, l’Ambassade de France à Varsovie (Ante Prima), and then Multicolore (Ante Prima), and in 2010 Architectures Subjectives (Archibooks).

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Caroline Rigaldiès qualified as an architect from the Paris Belleville school of architecture in 1991. She completed her training working for Santiago Calatrava, Edmond Lay and Antoine Grumbach.

A prizewinner in the annual PAN competition for young architects, she joined the Pargade practice in 1992. Entirely at home with the philosophy of the practice, she discovered the pleasure of channelling constraints and difficulties into creativity to provide a personal, sensitive and human take on architecture.

She became a partner in 2003 and contributes her passion to all projects, competitions and buildings, applying her expertise to large, complex hospital and other industrial and cleanroom programmes, as well as more urban projects (education or housing).

Pargade Architects promotes a signature urbanism and architecture via a sustainable, human and appropriate vision of building. The practice aims to anticipate future ways of living and working, particularly with regards to the digital revolution, and so to anticipate new social trends. We offer a way of life, places of wellbeing. We look for the poetry of place.

Pargade Architects, now with architect Caroline Rigaldiès as a partner, is founded upon a long-established and experienced team. The practice is structured into different centres of activity, composed of architects and engineers, and works collaboratively thanks to integrated BIM software.

We are known for our numerous striking buildings.  Our 25 years of experience make us one of France’s foremost specialists in hospital architecture.

The Bégin Military Teaching Hospital in Saint Mandé, the Sarthe-et-Loir health centre in Bailleul, the Villeneuve d’Ascq private , Mantes-la-Jolie hospital, Saint Joseph hospital in Paris and its master plan, the extension to Saint Joseph hospital in Marseille, are all projects that have marked the evolution of hospital design. In the areas of education and research, the Paris-Est Science and Technology campus at the heart of the ‘sustainable town’ of Marne-la-Vallée, the Ile-de-France Photovoltaic Institute on the Paris–Saclay campus, and the current competition for the AgropParisTech campus are exemplary in their integration into the Grand Paris project, the development of a ‘Greater Paris’.

Other key projects such as the French Embassy in Warsaw, one of the ‘references’ exhibited in the permanent collection of Paris’ Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, or the Biological Research and Analysis Centre at Lyon’s Croix-Rousse hospital, the CNRS (National Centre of Scientific Research) laboratories in Toulouse or housing for the Paris Seine Rive Gauche development, define the rigour and innovation characteristic of the practice.

Today our team has won the competition to build, in association with Art & Build, the new university hospital in Nantes, a healthcare building project unique in France.

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