Bas Smets on preparing the emblematic cathedral's esplanade for a warming world | Summit 2026

With a background in civil engineering and architecture, Bas Smets’s distinct approach to urban landscape design is informed by an understanding of the city as an ecosystem. Since founding his Brussels-based firm in 2007, Smets has completed more than 50 international projects. In 2022, Bureau Bas Smets won the prestigious international competition to redesign the public space surrounding Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. The comprehensive project reenvisions the esplanade leading to the medieval cathedral through the lens of the natural environment and outdoor comfort, reconfiguring the space as a sequence of overlapping “climatic atmospheres.” Doubling the number of trees on site and introducing an innovative ground cooling system, the firm deployed shade, water, and wind in its design to counter summer heatwaves in the heart of Paris. Building on Smets’s research into urban microclimates, the project reevaluates the role public spaces should serve in a time of accelerating global warming — and offers a model for how cities might prepare sites of historical significance for the future. This presentation was recorded at The World Around Summit 2026, a full-day program dedicated to Architecture’s Now, Near & Next. Taking place at The Museum of Modern Art, the program was co-organized by Beatrice Galilee, founder and executive director of The World Around, and Martino Stierli, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art.