Paris, out of fashion? Not so quick. This spring, a new fashion and design center, La Cité de la Mode et du Design, will be inaugurated along the Seine’s Left Bank, between the Bercy and Austerlitz bridges. The three-story building will host a fashion school, L’Institut français de la mode, an exhibition space—big enough to welcome catwalks of course—as well as music production studios, a bookstore, cafés, a restaurant. Paris-based architects Dominique Jakob and Brendan Macfarlane have enveloped the concrete construction of a dockside warehouse built in 1907 with a structure called the “plug-over,” made of steel, glass, and landscaped material. The 12,000-square meter building (129,000 square feet), also known as Docks en Seine, is the only one in Paris to extend over the Seine, with its lower part, a promising open-air terrace that can accommodate flooding.

The new center is located in the freshly renovated neighborhood around the Bibliothèque nationale in the 13th arrondissement which now comprises two universities and a new architecture school. Visiting the construction site last fall, Bertrand Delanoë, the mayor of Paris, talked about the “re-conquest of the Seine’s banks, one of the most magical sites in the world.” He said that the new fashion center was being erected in “a rather ugly place that is about to become gorgeous.”

Docks en Seine, quai d’Austerlitz, between the ponts de Bercy and d’Austerlitz. Paris 13. M° Gare d’Austerlitz.