To answer to the issues raised by the threats that may pose new technologies on privacy, lawyers and experts from many countries more and more emphasize on the principle of « privacy by design » (PbD). The basic principle of PbD is to take into account during the design phase of new products or systems, the need to protect privacy. From a technical point of view, the PbD has already been applied on an individual basis in specific areas. For the PbD can be adopted by industry, it is necessary to capitalize on these efforts, to identify the broad principles and to propose methods for their systematic application. The BioPriv project aims to propose such a systematic approach and apply it to a concrete case: the biometric access control. The followed approach is to design a formal model generic enough to take into account the relevant parameters for such systems (both in terms of technical requirements and from key players for the protection of privacy) and derive from this formal model procedures for analysis and generation of architectures satisfying the constraints of PbD. The expected results are of two types: methodological (systematic design method and evaluation) and applied (reference architectures). The results of the BioPriv project provide valuable assistance to architects who have to take into account the constraints of privacy protection as well as designers of future access control solutions. They will also facilitate, when appropriate, the implementation of certification procedures in relation to the requirements of private data protection.