ESTP launches a fundraising campaign of 10 million euros

The "Inspiring the Next Generation. Building the Future" campaign aims to make the Cachan campus a sustainable and exemplary place, a space where innovation meets decarbonization, where ideas become projects, and where every student enjoys an enriched and globally connected experience. With this fundraising campaign, the school is giving itself the means to take a decisive step in its history: creating a campus resolutely focused on the future and bringing together a committed community around a shared conviction – that engineering can sustainably transform our societies.

Inspiring the next generation. Building the future: a meaningful campaign, three areas of development

Thanks to this fundraising campaign, ESTP hopes to finalize the modernization and transformation of its campus, which began in January 2025, in a sustainable and responsible vision, serving the younger generation and future generations.

This ambition rests on three pillars:

• Enriching the student experience: evolving the learning environment to meet the expectations of younger generations, with a renewed range of services, a high-quality natural environment, and facilities that promote social cohesion and physical and mental well-being.
• Combining scientific excellence and innovation to provide systemic solutions that enable the construction sector to fully participate in the ecological transition, and schools to support the transformation of professions and the reinvention of the cities of tomorrow.
• To make the ecological transition the heart of the pedagogy, and to transform the campus, opened in 1904, into a true living demonstrator, a showcase of know-how in low carbon construction, and a place open to the city and society.

According to Joël Cuny, Director General of ESTP: “With the Cachan 2028 project, we want to make our historic campus much more than a place of learning: an inspiring ecosystem where education, research, innovation and quality of life come together, serving the ecological transition and the city of tomorrow.”

The funds raised will allow us to:

• To realize the final stage of a major component of its strategic plan, namely its strategy to make its campuses places where training, research and experimentation are hybridized to support the changes in the sector
• Strengthening the school's appeal, with the creation of an institute for the decarbonization of construction and an institute for artificial intelligence in construction
• To consolidate its role as a key player in training construction professionals who are experts in digital issues, decarbonization and sustainability.

An ambitious fundraising effort to scale up

The campaign, which begins in January 2026, is part of the overall financing plan for the "Campus Cachan 2028" project, the first phase of which - financed by equity, by loan and with the support of several institutional partners - was launched in early 2025.

It will help to finance:

• The final building of the project, a 1.600 m² Learning Center, certified RT2012, which will be the new beating heart of the new version campus, designed as a reception and service hub for students, and the redefinition of circulation axes within the campus (soft mobility) and the development of 10.000 m² of green spaces certified BiodiverCity Life (17,5% of the funds raised)
• The creation of two institutes dedicated to the transformation of business practices and applied research: the Institute for the Decarbonization of Construction (IDC), dedicated to applied research and low carbon solutions (37,5% of the funds raised) and the Institute for Artificial Intelligence for Construction (IIAC), the first French academic center entirely devoted to AI applied to the sector (32.5% of the funds raised);
• A space dedicated to international meetings and events (12,5% ​​of funds raised)

The completion of this final phase will allow the ESTP campus in Cachan to become a true open-air laboratory, where students, researchers, and professional partners can experiment, design, and test the innovations that will shape the cities and infrastructure of the coming decades. Construction is scheduled to begin in June 2026, with completion expected by the end of 2027.

The delivery of the new flagship buildings of the first phase (4.600 m² research hall, new continuing education premises, sports complex), financed by an initial investment of 40 million euros from the school, is scheduled for November 2026.

A unifying project for an entire community and for the construction industry, a call to nurture a legacy

To offer students, teachers, and partners an environment where they learn to act and progress together, to transmit to future generations the conviction that constructive engineering is not just a science, but the promise of a more sustainable and responsible, more open and connected world: the fundraising campaign “Inspire the next generation. Build the future” is aimed at the entire ESTP community (alumni, patrons, partner companies and institutions in the construction sector).

Approved by the school's board of directors last November, the campaign is organized in close collaboration with the ESTP Foundation and alumni associations (ESTP Alumni, Réseau CBL - works managers, bachelors and licenses).

By transforming the Cachan campus, ESTP affirms a clear objective: to train differently, to build differently, and to fully contribute to the transition of the construction sector towards more sustainable, intelligent and responsible practices.