La Fondation

La Fondation occupies a long, narrow plot at 40–42 rue Legendre that runs back toward rue de Saussure. Before the conversion, the plot held a nine-story building of offices and apartments facing rue Legendre, a multistory car park behind it and a photo studio. The office building and the car park both date from the 1960s.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

The site belongs to Galia, a family-owned property group whose president is Brice Errera. Le Parisien reports that the car park was half empty in the early 2010s, and that the project took more than ten years from the purchase of the car park to completion in 2025. Galia's press kit of September 2021 called the scheme "Legendre" and planned to finish it in the first half of 2022. Galia's project page gives February 2025 as the delivery date.^{[10][12][4][5][6][1]}

PCA-STREAM, the Paris firm of the architect Philippe Chiambaretta, designed the conversion. The New York studio Roman and Williams, co-founded by Robin Standefer, designed the interiors. For the rooms, the studio drew on late Modernist Paris. The New York Times describes the room walls, painted in blocks of color and framed in oak, as a nod to Yves Saint Laurent's 1965 Mondrian dress.^[2][7][8]

The office building on rue Legendre became the hotel, and its street front was redesigned as a grid of black metal and wood around large windows. The car park became offices that open onto a courtyard on the rue de Saussure side, and Galia moved its own headquarters there. The car park's spiral concrete ramp was left bare and now serves as an event space called Le Hall.^{[1][2][9][10]}

In a December 2025 interview, the hotel's general manager, Marion Gerent, said that the former photo studio became the sports club. She also explained the name: the hotel is called La Fondation because the project "was deeply rooted in the original foundations of the building."^[12][11]

La Fondation opened on 28 April 2025. On 26 May 2025, Atout France, the French tourism agency, classified it as a five-star hotel with 58 rooms. In March 2026 the conversion won the Best Mixed-Use Project category at the MIPIM Awards, an international real-estate competition.^{[10][12][8][13][3]}