Laying a foundation

Christophe and Jesse founded Lemoal Lemoal in 2010, just after finishing their architecture studies. Starting with small projects, mostly restaurants and small public buildings, the office grew gradually until in 2018, when Sonia Sifflet, an architect and landscape architect who was running her own landscape practice called Octobre Office, joined the team as a partner. Lemoal Lemoal architecture paysage currently runs one office in Paris and another in Rennes with a team of around a dozen architects in total.

An early weekend

We like to start the day quite early at 8:30am. An important part of our organisation is to have the entire team at the same time at the office to start the day together. As we are a small team working in a large open space, the communication is quite easy. However, we make sure that everyone is aware of the ongoing projects. In order to do so, we start each month with a team meeting. We do not work on most Friday afternoons. Thanks to an early start to the weekend, everyone in the team can have some personal time and this helps balance work and private life.

A multifaceted shared space

Our office in Paris has been located at the same address since we started our activities in 2010. We started in a tiny room, with just Jess and Christophe. As we grew in our practice, we have since extended our studio space. Today the studio is a large 200sqm open space, with shared desks, a well-equipped modelmaking atelier, big shelves full of samples and books, and a professional kitchen, used sometimes by invited chefs. As the studio is spacious, we also have some room for coworkers. Most of them work in architectural fields but it is always interesting to share our different works.

An ability to respond well

We can say that we are lucky enough to do what we like and have varied projects. When Christoph and Jess started the office, they began working on private and small-scale projects, mainly restaurants. It was easy for them to be stuck in these kinds of projects. By growing gradually, they were able to work for public clients. Over the years, the scale and typology of our projects both grew and became more diverse. Today we work for private and public clients. We also do some social and cultural buildings such as housing, and even some sports architecture. Part of our office’s identity is to have the ability to find answers cleverly in diverse situations.

Remaining focused

We would like to continue to maintain full control of our projects from beginning to completion. We attach a lot of importance to the quality of the materials that we choose and their finishing. We spend time with the workers onsite to ensure that the construction fits well with the design ideas. Even if our projects get bigger through the years, we want to maintain this level of attention to our project execution. In this light, we have created Lexe, a company that specifically focuses on execution for private projects.