One of the first and at the same time the most significant (due to the rank of the institution and its prestigious location) of the numerous French realisations by Stanislaw Fiszer (b. 1935), resulting from his 1983 competition victory, has made a decisive contribution to consolidating his position in France. The brutalist façade on the street side fits in counter-intuitively with the old buildings of the Marais district, and is full of subtle and surprising details and material games, creating the suggestion of a building growing over time and picturesquely differentiated.

The building, which has an elongated rectangular plan and is made up of two sections connected by a gallery, was built in the vicinity of the old edifices of the National Archives, housed in historic palaces, including the Hôtel de Rohan and the Hôtel de Soubise. It closes off the area of the palace gardens from the Quatre-fils street. The proportions of the edifice and most of the essential components of articulation relate to the existing architecture. The garden façade is completely different in character from the street façade: there are classical reminiscences, greater compositional rigour, and use is made of the authentic former portal of the national printing house. The main entrance is located in the shorter side elevation and is marked by a tower-rotunda, whose high-tech design contrasts markedly with the surrounding monuments. The building primarily houses an information hall and modern study rooms where archive documents are made available. Essentially divided into two above-ground storeys, each 7 m high, it is further cut into intermediate mezzanine levels in individual sections. The character of the interiors is determined mainly by the wooden panels and the divisions achieved within them. CARAN is connected to the other archive buildings via underground passages. The functionality of the individual rooms is currently undergoing changes again, due to the relocation of a large part of the archives to new premises near Paris and their progressive digitisation. Fiszer also designed furniture for the interior of the Archives Nationales. The author of the bronze relief in the street façade is Yvan Theimer, the designer of the grilles (which largely dictate the aesthetics of the building) is Pierre Gaucher, and the pyramid in the entrance rotunda is Adalberto Mecarelli.