Hello Maud,

Architecture for the living, architecture of life(ves), architecture that takes part in the debate … your last interviews seem to reveal a desire to change the codes of architecture for more humanity and transversality. Can you tell us more?

I believe to the essential link between Human and Nature, as our closest environment. This vital, biological, essential link is my first inspiration and a driving force in the architecture that I propose. I work a lot with natural light specially in the dialogue between in and outdoor spaces.

Above all, I’m also claiming for a committed architecture. Our current environmental and societal challenges are huge. Climate challenges, protection of biodiversity, inclusion and social diversity … it is our common responsibility, including architects, to act with greater ambitions and achievements. Architecture must absolutely rise in debate, anticipate, invest and spend time on innovative projects with  high impacts. We should all be part of a constant strategic thinking to find and implement innovative concrete solutions.

You think architecture as a borderless and open discipline. How does it feel in your achievements ?

I believe in a borderless architecture that blurs boundaries between disciplines. Indeed, I think that greater projects are those with the greater transversality in their uses. I like to work on projects in all their dimensions: from the micro to the macro scale, from the object design to the global interior architecture, from the architecture of the building in itself to its integration in the landscape.

In my opinion, blurring disciplines is essential to create a coherent architectural in harmony with its environment. My last realisation illustrates this idea. La Maison des Landes is perched in a pine forest a few meters from the sea. This carte blanche, built on stilts with a dark and elegant wood structure was thought to blend into its environment, respond to it, blur the boundaries between inside and outside.

In each project I try to propose an architecture of life(ves). In my opinion architectural projects should not be “fashionable” but have the duty to propose a sustainable aesthetic, in a sense that they should cross the years, decades, centuries without having lost their auras.
Also, reversibility of uses is in the heart of my approach. This is a practice that I started to discuss during my studies and it never left me. Indeed, I believe that reversibility of buildings is one of the solutions to significantly limit their environmental impact.

What is your next ideal project ? 

I like the idea of being able to act both at very large and on a small scale. With La Maison sur les toits in Paris, I had imagined that as one builds a hut in the trees, why not build a house between two buildings to see without being seen. I dream of rehabilitating roofs of Paris: building as many huts in the secret recesses of the capital would be magical to face the housing crisis! On a large scale, I would very much like to participate in the construction or renovation of a museum, cultural center, to go deeper in the mix of disciplines.