Le Monde HQ Sketchbooks is an artistic record of a building's construction told entirely through hand-drawn sketches and engravings — 232 selected works made across more than 250 site visits over three years by French artist Frédéric Chaume.
About This Book
Published by Snøhetta Books to mark the fifth anniversary of Le Monde's Paris headquarters, this volume documents the construction of the building from 2017 to 2020 not through photographs or technical drawings, but through Chaume's sustained, intimate engagement with the site. His sketches and engravings capture the labour, scale, and urban transformation of the project in a way that no architectural survey could. The book is enriched with poetry by Lamiya Shirvanzada, an introduction by Snøhetta co-founder Kjetil Trædal Thorsen, and essays by architect-historian Jean-Louis Cohen and Aedes director Kristin Feireiss — together placing this act of hand-drawn documentation within a wider architectural and cultural discourse.
Key Features
- 359 pages of hand-drawn sketches, engravings, and accompanying critical texts
- Artwork by Frédéric Chaume; poems by Lamiya Shirvanzada; introduction by Kjetil Trædal Thorsen; essays by Jean-Louis Cohen and Kristin Feireiss
- 232 selected works documenting the construction of Le Monde's Paris headquarters
- Published by Snøhetta Books, 2025
What You'll Discover
- How sustained artistic observation — over 250 site visits — can reveal the human dimension of construction that architectural photography rarely captures
- The intersection of fine art practice and architectural documentation, where engraving and drawing become tools for recording urban transformation
- The cultural ambition behind the Le Monde headquarters project, shaped by late chairman Pierre Bergé's desire to preserve a legacy beyond technical records
- Critical frameworks for reading Chaume's work, provided by Jean-Louis Cohen and Kristin Feireiss, that situate hand-drawn architectural documentation within broader art-historical and cultural contexts
About the Author
Frédéric Chaume is a French artist who documented the construction of Le Monde's Paris headquarters through hand-drawn sketches and engravings made across more than 250 site visits between 2017 and 2020. Lamiya Shirvanzada contributed poems that accompany Chaume's visual record throughout the book.
Specifications
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 359
- Dimensions: 20 x 27.3 cm
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9788269273724
- Publisher: Snøhetta Books
- Publication Date: 2025
Perfect For: Architects and designers interested in the intersection of art and construction documentation; students of architectural history and drawing; collectors of artist books that engage with urban transformation and the built environment.