INSEAD Campus – Desmarais Tower
Fontainebleau, France
INSEAD
Architect: WILMOTTE & ASSOCIÉS ARCHITECTES
Project management / Site supervision (MOEX / OPC): CICAD
Economist / Specifications writer: ALLIANCE-ECONOMIE
Structural engineering / Deconstruction & decontamination design: ARTELIA
Facade engineering: RFR
Building services / Thermal / Environmental / Fire safety systems (SSI): ALTO
Acoustics engineering: LASA
Landscape architect: AGENCE TER
Infrastructure / Utilities (VRD): INGEROP
Fire safety consultant: STUDIO FAHRENHEIT
Building control / Health & safety coordination (SPS): SOCOTEC
9,537 sqm
2026
Restructuring and renovation of the Desmarais Tower building within the INSEAD campus
Founded in 1957 in Fontainebleau, France, INSEAD (European Institute of Business Administration), known as the “Business School for the World,” has expanded from its historic campus to Singapore, Abu Dhabi, and San Francisco. Wilmotte & Associés has been commissioned to renovate five buildings on the Fontainebleau campus, including the Desmarais Tower. The project preserves the building’s sober and rigorous 1970s geometry through its rhythm and strong vertical emphasis, while introducing a contemporary architectural language adapted to current and future uses.
The specificity of the original volumes is preserved and enhanced, creating a dialogue between free forms, architectural rigor, and contemporary materials. The transparency and lightness of glass contrast with Vaugirard brick, an emblematic material of the site, whose presence extends both inside and outside the building.
On the ground floor, the Desmarais Tower hosts the main social space, encouraging interaction through a wide range of services. The cafeteria opens onto a generous south-facing terrace, while food & beverage spaces allow for more private exchanges. More intimate and cozy, the fireplace area—an object from a past era—offers, through its reinterpreted hearth, a gradual transition toward a more domestic atmosphere. This level is also dedicated to study, with its iconic cylindrical meeting rooms opening onto the landscape. Finally, a new elevator ensures full accessibility for people with reduced mobility across all levels.
The first floor includes two amphitheaters (100 seats), served by a suspended walkway within a majestic double-height space. Once again, cylindrical study rooms punctuate the route, offering intimacy, a sense of domesticity, and views of the surrounding landscape for students. To the north and south, balconies act as belvederes overlooking the forest scenery.
The mezzanine houses the technical facilities for the auditoriums as well as restrooms.
The redevelopment of the site, located at the edge of the forest, places particular emphasis on its environment. The transparency of the spaces blurs the boundaries between indoors and outdoors. The glass façades are also replaced to encourage dialogue between the building and nature, while meeting current thermal regulation requirements. Altogether, the project reinforces the site’s identity as a forest campus.
Thus, the Desmarais Tower project embodies the renewal of the INSEAD Campus and its integration into a new generation of spaces dedicated to the transmission of knowledge.
