Lecture Series: Notre Dame de Paris—After the Fire: The Redesign of the Surroundings of Notre-Dame de Paris

In partnership with the Alliance Française Miami Metro, the Alliance Française de Chicago, and the Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris, the Federation of Alliances Françaises USA presents this third and last installment of its lecture series, Notre-Dame de Paris—Before and After the Fire.

In 2022, the City of Paris announced that the team led by Belgian landscape designer Bas Smets won the competition to reimagine the area surrounding Notre-Dame Cathedral. Bas Smets will describe how the team plans to redesign the square in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral and the underground parking spaces beneath it, the Jean XXIII square located behind the cathedral, the Seine riverbanks, and the adjacent streets, in order to create a microclimate to mitigate the effects of climate change. This extensive project is scheduled to begin in 2025 and end in 2030.

About the Speaker

Bas Smets

Bas Smets received master’s degrees in Architecture and Civil Engineering from the University of Leuven and in Landscape from the University of Geneva. In 2007, he founded Bureau Bas Smets in Brussels, whose designs explore new ways to transform the city into an urban ecology, capable of producing cooling microclimates to counter climate change. In addition to his design work, Bas Smets has taught at various schools of architecture in Europe. In 2023, he was appointed Professor in Practice at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

About the Moderator

Russell Kelley

Russell Kelley is Vice President of the Alliance Française Miami Metro and the author of The Making of Paris (Lyons Press, 2021) and Walking Through the Ages of Paris (Lyons Press, to be published in 2026).