Paris, building by building

October 2026 · Self-initiated

All 122,435 buildings of Paris, each standing in the year it was built. Play the city from the 12th century to today, open any street as a row of façades, or walk it at eye level.

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The task

Self-set. Maps that colour a city's buildings by age are a known genre: Amsterdam, Brooklyn, Paris itself at least twice. Another one was not the point. I wanted to add something to the idea.

The result

What is new here. The city stands in 3D and turns any way you like, so a district can be looked at as a place and not as a pattern. Buildings are more than boxes: roofs and domes are assembled from OpenStreetMap parts, so Notre-Dame or the Panthéon are recognisable from the air. And two modes I have not seen on an age map before. Street mode: any street opens as two rows of façades facing each other, every house at its true place, with its year and its number. Panorama: you stand in that street at eye level and walk it. Under all this, 122,435 buildings dated from the city's register, from Mérimée and from the national address base, on real ground. Live at paris.bogachev.fr.

Project sheet

My role: Everything, solo. Concept, data, 3D engine, design, code.
Data: APUR building register, Mérimée (historic monuments), Base Adresse Nationale, OpenStreetMap, IGN RGE ALTI terrain.
Scale: 122,435 buildings, 8,546 streets, 771 monuments.
Built with: WebGL, geometry built in workers, a binary payload streamed in tiles.
When: September to October 2026.

How it works

The whole piece in forty seconds. The film, the timeline, a street found by search, its row of façades, then a panorama from the pavement.

The main view, all of Paris coloured by construction period, the legend and the timeline — The map at rest. Colours hinge on Haussmann: cool before 1851, warm after, the works themselves near white. The legend counts every period, the timeline holds one dot per fifty buildings, and the Play button runs the city from the 12th century to today.

Rue Monge opened as two rows of façades facing each other — Street mode. Rue Monge, 138 buildings, as two rows of façades facing each other, every house at its true place along the street with its year and its number.

The panorama from the pavement, the Eiffel Tower as a lidar point cloud — Panorama. Stand in the street at eye level and walk it; the big landmarks come in as lidar point clouds.

The card for the Sacré-Cœur, with its photo, year and architect — Any building opens a card: year, period, height, architect, a photo, and a way to its street.

Floors mode, the city coloured by storey count, blue below the Paris norm and red above — Floors mode. The same city by storey count, from the land registry where it agrees with the building's height. Grey is the Paris norm of five to seven floors, blue below it, red above.

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