Publishing & Knowledge

When knowledge becomes architecture

For Cairn, we sculpted 500m² in Paris into an editorial showcase: a cosy ecosystem where 55 scientific minds cultivate the excellence of the book.

500 m²
3 months
2025

hospitality_corporate

Concept

Scientific publishing takes centre stage

Elegant, high-end fit-out with accents of colour to bring the space to life and make it dynamic.

Situation

Cairn.info, the French scientific publishing platform with 600 journals and 20,000 books, entrusted Kytom with reinventing 500 sqm in Paris for 55 employees. Three uses compete for the floor plate: editorial production requiring sustained concentration, training rooms to reconfigure between sessions, and an author reception area where the first impression carries the house.

Bare-shell delivery, signature to handover in three months in 2025, headcount growth announced for the near term. The central constraint is not the fit-out but reversibility: every partition installed must be able to move without demolition, or risk locking Cairn into today’s floor plan.

500 sqm to deliver in 3 months, on a bare-shell floor plate

Three tensions structure the project. The schedule first: 3 months from signature to 55 operational workstations, with a tight budget that rules out any late trade-off and requires partitions, services and furniture to be locked in from the detailed design phase. Modularity next: Cairn is preparing for headcount growth, and the layout must absorb tomorrow what it structures today.

The material register finally: scientific publishing calls for a precise palette, at a remove from both the startup code and the corporate code. Four technical constraints add to the diagnosis: flows to separate between editorial production, training and reception; regulatory compartmentation; ventilation to recalibrate on the new zoning; natural facade light to push through to the second depth.

Two structuring decisions: movable wall and demountable partitions, 95% reusable furniture

Kytom led the assignment on a design and build basis, with integrated design and project management, organising the solution around two decisions that condition everything else.

First decision: a movable wall and demountable partitions rather than masonry partitioning. It is the heaviest investment on the project and the most contested in budget trade-offs, retained because Cairn anticipates headcount growth. In concrete terms, the training rooms reconfigure between sessions, and the floor plate can be re-divided without demolition during the next growth phase. The initial extra cost is recouped with the very first reconfiguration avoided.

Second decision: new furniture fully specified on circularity criteria, integrated into the fit-out package rather than purchased in parallel. 95% reusable, 90% recyclable, 90% repairable, 30% of the scope in recycled materials: these thresholds were contractualised upfront, which ruled out several furniture references at the selection stage.

With these two decisions made, the rest fell into place: a functional audit by department with occupancy counts and meeting typologies, space planning prioritising concentration, training and reception, a muted palette with chromatic accents on the circulations, technical carpet to treat reverberation on the editorial floors, frosted vinyl films to grade transparency. 19 packages coordinated in execution: electrical, plumbing, structured cabling, scenographic lighting from 3000 to 4000 K according to use, paint, flooring, plants, decoration, transfer engineering.

55 workstations delivered in 3 months, floor plate re-divisible without demolition

Delivery within the contractual 3-month timeframe across the 500 sqm, 55 workstations operational from move-in. The four circularity indicators contractualised upfront are met at handover: 95% of the furniture reusable in the event of future reconfiguration, 90% of components recyclable, 90% repairable, 30% of the scope in recycled materials.

The decision on the movable wall and demountable partitions delivers its intended effect: the floor plate can absorb the announced headcount growth without breakage or heavy rework of services, and Cairn’s next phase will be handled as a reconfiguration rather than a construction project. The initial trade-off, which weighed in the budget phase, becomes the asset that amortises the investment over several use cycles.

Three months to deliver, several cycles to pay off.

500

sq m transformed

months of work

workstations

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