Public tenders and strategic collaborations

OL: The French market has this particularity where there are public tenders—sometimes not entirely open, but still public—where you apply, and then a selection is made. Typically, three or four offices are chosen to take part in the tender process. Often, you’re not paid for submitting a proposal (for the competitive part), but the application process doesn’t take up too much time. You do need to have reference projects to be selected, but you can share the consortium with other companies, which helps build your portfolio.

CM: Over the last decade, public entities have been trying to give younger firms more opportunities. Sometimes they even ask for a consortium that includes both a well-established office and a younger one—by “young”, I mean around 35. It’s a good way to offer a chance to new firms. 

OL: And in Paris, everything is centralised, so from here, you can work anywhere in France because it’s all connected. Our work primarily focuses on urban planning and large-scale projects, often situated in various regions of the country. Staying connected to other cities is crucial in our field. Initially, most of our projects were concentrated in the east and southeast of France, particularly around Lyon, near the Swiss border.

CM: We focus heavily on public tenders and usually choose the ones where we’re familiar with the territory and the city because we’ve had previous projects there. We know how things work and how the political network operates. It's always easier when you know the context. We know the questions we are trying to respond to, the direction they want to take, and we are interested in working on projects with a more progressive, ecological approach. We also try to apply for very large projects by forming consortiums with established offices, including foreign ones. For example, we’ve worked with 51N4E in Brussels and KCAP in Rotterdam for large-scale projects, but we also look for opportunities where we can take the lead. It’s about finding the right balance between different types of commissions and scales.    

Setting the basis for Lafayette

OL: We both graduated from the Versailles School of Architecture. Our thesis advisor was Djamel Klouche, who was one of the founders of l’AUC, a well-known urban planning company in Paris. After graduation, we worked with him for about six years, and that’s where we really learned a lot about methodology. Before that, I spent some time in Asia. I did an internship with Kengo Kuma in Japan, worked for a large British company in Hong Kong, and then worked with a small research-focused company in Beijing. That’s when I started getting really interested in urban planning and design.

CM: After the experience at l’AUC in Paris, I continued to work for about two years in London at John Robertson Architects. It was a very technical firm, which provided a completely different experience compared to the previous one. I wanted to see what it was like to work in a large Anglo-Saxon office and learn from another context. After a couple of years, I realised it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, so I moved back to Paris. That’s when we decided to start Lafayette.

OL: When Charles moved back to Paris, we had the chance to do a large competition together with one of the big French companies. They wanted to subcontract a competition in China, and we decided to take it on and do it our way, focusing on environmental design. We lost the competition, but it was a good way to kick off our office. We also started putting together some of the methodologies we still use today. For example, we involved Etablissement—a landscape practice that today shares the office space with us—in this competition. We had worked with Annabelle Blin, the founding partner of Etablissement, before—and she had just started her own office. We were starting ours, so we decided to collaborate. It became our first commission under our own names.

CM: It was also a fun time because, at that point, everyone in our generation was trying to start their own companies, which led to multiple collaborations with our peers. After the competition, we worked with Zefco, an environmental office that was also an emerging practice at the time. It was a dynamic period, with everyone trying to get their own office off the ground. It was an exciting moment.

The ethics of place-making

OL: We are not tied to a fixed methodology. We try to be specific to each place and its people, taking into account the social issues connected to that location. It’s very different working in places like French Guiana, Lyon, or Annecy. You have to understand not only the issues, but also what triggers a project in each specific location. That doesn’t mean you can't make ethical statements, like “this is how it will be in 2050”, but to make the project happen, you need to find the right vision, the right way to express it, and take small, concrete steps. In urban planning, you're typically addressing societal issues like ecology, economic development, and housing. We try to understand the key issues and build a consortium to address them. For example, we’re working on a master plan for the city centre of Cayenne, French Guiana. We learned a lot from this experience. You have to figure out how to make things happen. When we started, we didn’t know the area, but we found local people who could help. Cayenne is a melting pot of people from all over the world—Brazilians, Surinamese, Caribbean, European, Lebanese, and even Southeast Asians working in agriculture and fishing. To work on an urban project there, you need people who speak these different languages and understand the mix of cultures. Planning from afar and saying, “this is what’s going to happen”, just doesn’t work.

CM: We also try not to just solve problems, but to start by looking at what’s good about the site—what’s rich and interesting—and reveal that. We always start from the site itself, and that's why we work with a very specific team. They help us stay precise and true to the site. It's not about solving small problems but revealing the qualities of the site. This is the general approach, and it varies depending on the context. Everyone in the team adds value to the project, and we want to give everyone a chance to contribute. I think previous generations of urbanists followed a more top-down approach, but our generation—architects, landscape designers, urbanists—we focus on collaboration, where everyone brings something to the table. 

OL: It’s a long process. It takes time to get everyone on the same page, but it’s the only way to achieve meaningful results. One advantage we have is that we started working in the 2010s and saw the societal issues of the time. Big projects were often about large metropolises—cities with over a million people—trying to structure the territory, provide housing, and create jobs. This was after the financial crisis, so unemployment and housing were major concerns. These cities also had more power than before, with more competencies to shape their territories. Then, in the late 2010s and early 2020s, with the COVID crisis and growing awareness of ecological issues, we saw a political shift in how metropolises approached development. It went from just addressing unemployment and economic growth to focusing on making territories liveable—what we call habitabilité in French. We witnessed this shift in local policies, and I think our generation is responding to it—planning for the next 30 years. 

Strategic alliances

CM: After selecting a public tender, one of the first steps in moving forward with the process is to build a consortium of partners. For example, we recently collaborated with 51N4E for the L’Île de Nantes public tender competition, where we were one of the finalists. We chose to work with them because of their expertise in transforming existing buildings and creating value from sites. Our relationship with 51N4E came from us leading one of the teams in the international consultation for the Grand Porte des Alpes territory in Lyon, while 51N4E was leading another consortium. L’Île de Nantes is a former shipyard island at the heart of the city, undergoing major regeneration since the early 2000s, with several planners shaping its evolution over time. Initially driven by the idea of a creative cluster inspired by Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ theory, the project helped transform Nantes into a cultural hub. Today, a new generation of planners is continuing the work with a shift in focus: achieving carbon neutrality by 2040. 

OL: For a project with such ambitions, assembling the right team is essential. Alongside 51N4E, the consortium included several other partners, such as Carbone 4, the consulting firm we collaborated with on the ecological transition. From our side, we then involved Etablissement: we often collaborate on these kinds of proposals, so we brought them in directly. 51N4E have worked with Plant en Houtgoed, who are botanical engineers, so they brought them in too. We put together this core team and then involved other experts who might provide added value to the consortium. We’ve worked with Atmos Lab, a small environmental engineering team based in London. They’re technically excellent, so they were a great fit for the project. We also needed bigger engineering teams to deliver the work, so we joined forces with Setec.

CM: We have also involved Cuesta, a cooperative of urban designers based in Rennes. They take a more artistic approach to the project by involving artists to engage the community and facilitate dialogue around the project. It’s a unique way of getting people involved in the process. We knew Nantes had a strong cultural scene, but their approach to culture wasn’t really tourist-driven. They used culture differently, and we wanted to do the same. 

OL: Coordinating within a consortium is also very time-consuming. For the Île de Nantes public tender, I calculated that we had around 150 meetings. With multiple people in the consortium, the time and cost add up. Building the consortium evolves through ongoing discussions and is one of the most important parts of large-scale project proposals, which require a wide range of expertise to cover all aspects of long-term planning. 

CM: Although we did not win that project, our collaboration with 51N4E continues to this day. For example, we were recently selected with them for a competition to renovate and transform a 1970s residential tower designed by architect Jean Dubuisson in Pessac. The project is part of a larger state program called "Quartiers de Demain" (QDD), launched by the government in 2025, aimed at promoting ambitious and innovative architectural projects in priority neighbourhoods.

On multiple scales at once

CM: When working on master plans, we know these projects will last at least 20 years, so we need to approach them with a long-term view. That's why we form consortiums and bring in people from different fields—not just architects or landscape designers—to help us develop this vision. It’s an important part of the process.

OL: Sometimes, though, it’s interesting to do the opposite. With the Cayenne project, for instance, the process was hectic. We initially planned a typical approach: start with a large master plan and zoom into operational sites, then focus on implementing those. But due to staffing issues in the community, they had to prioritise and asked us to focus on a few key aspects instead of the full scope. So we had to adapt and think, “Okay, let’s zoom in rather than out.” This way, we could really explore the cultural aspects of urban planning, not just focus on big structures and societal issues, but also on the smaller details that make Cayenne unique. We dove into the details early on, and after a few months, we managed to keep the project moving by showing how the first building would work. This allowed us to continue developing the urban plan. Now, by zooming out, we have a deeper understanding of the complexities that developers, architects, and public developers face in the region. We also learned more about the local character—like the beautiful metal grids and raw earth bricks typical of French Guiana. It’s a way of working that’s both operational and radical in the end.

CM: Besides this project, in the past couple of years, we were involved in several urban and architectural proposals in France, such as in Lyon and Paris. For example, we are currently developing 75 housing units in the 15th arrondissement of Paris with JBMN architects, and we have just been selected to lead the development of the ZAC Canal neighbourhood in Aubervilliers. Last year, we also entered a major competition in Lyon. The goal was to refurbish the banks, which are currently a highway, and transform them into a greener, car-free area. 

OL: We also worked on an exciting competition in La Défense in Paris with private developers. La Défense wanted to sell part of its infrastructure to developers, specifically an area with just a road cutting through the heart of the district, a very unwelcoming space with lots of concrete. The idea was to see if developers could transform this into something better, with both new infrastructure and attractive programs. The developers reached out to us to do the master planning, and they also brought in the American company Studio Gong. So, we did the master plan and coordinated with other architects to ensure the overall project made sense.