Dual roots, strong start

YM: Launching a practice today requires flexibility and adaptation. While Paris hosts many architecture firms, from the outset this practice chose to operate in two regions of France—both western (Bretagne) and Paris and its surroundings. This dual presence has been key to establishing the firm in 2021 and maintaining resilience amid shifting political agendas and private-sector challenges. Starting a practice often means embracing small, unconventional projects. That was true for us with Dienville (Région Champagne), our first public tender—a project born from a residency. We spent five days there, living on site, connecting with the mayor, neighbours, local officials, and the CAUE Conseil d’Architecture, d’Urbanisme et de l’Environnement. It ended up being more of a programming mission though we ended up doing a proper project afterwards. This project was fundamental for our office, serving as a crucial starting point. Although it wasn't highly profitable, it successfully opened doors to public tenders and the public sector.

HM: For this residency, the applicants were all very young practices, like us, with one or two years of starting their own practice. It was really about thinking in terms of programming without the assurance that the project would ever come out.  It’s a small town, and both the national political instability and the administrative complexity in France make it difficult for the local authorities to get it organised and built in the end. Still, during the residency, we made a proper project, with images, plans, and held an exhibition on site. We invited the mayor, the neighbors, the CAUE, and everyone involved. That temporary project became a reference for us that we used in order to apply for other small rehabilitations and extensions, like the one we created in Combrit Sainte Marine (Finistère). That’s also when our dual implantation—in Paris and Brittany—became relevant.

We aimed to work across diverse environments and territories, engaging with various client types and project scopes, including public realm, social housing, private housing, and individual residences. We wanted to work both in rural areas, which we call in French centre-bourg, meaning small villages, and urban areas. 

BP: The Sociocultural Centre of Danville and the Public Library of Combat Sainte Marine were our first step into public competitions—our first public facility contracts. Before that, we worked for a large Parisian office, with about 50 architects. Between the three of us, we spent four to eight years there, working as project leaders. Then COVID hit.

HM: Around that time, we completed a big project we’d been working on, were nearly 30, and wanted to do a project for our own office. We started entering competitions together, like Europan, to see how we worked as a team and test our potential for collaboration. One of our first proposals was located in Charleroi, Belgium, for EUROPAN. Though we received the jury's special mention, the project never went through. After that, we decided to start our own practice. It was quite a challenge since we didn’t leave our respective jobs with ongoing projects. We started with a few small flat renovations in Paris—60 to 80 square metres—which weren’t enough to sustain the three of us financially, but kept us working as a practice. Very quickly, we decided to rent an office space. It felt necessary to us to physically gather, brainstorm, and bring our projects together. Even though we now have larger projects, we manage to keep a variety of scales and scopes in our projects. This diversity, especially our smaller projects, allows us to experiment and evolve our architectural concepts.

Collaborative growth

BP: I was born in Saint Brieuc (Bretagne). I spent much of my life there, and my family still lives in the area. My girlfriend and I built a house in the area, and I already had a local network, so it became evident to me that I would work there too. Following the Socio-Cultural Centre of Dienville project, we have decided to expand our focus on public realm projects in Brittany.

HM: With Bertrand in Brittany, we had the chance to open up our geographic scope. We started meeting people—politicians, the CAUE (Conseil d'Architecture, d'Urbanisme et de l'Environnement), and others involved in regional projects. That allowed us to apply to small local projects. It wasn’t the main goal, but it became a strategic part of the office. Brittany also offered a very different landscape from Paris, architecturally and materially. The kinds of projects we do there are different. We are deeply focused on materiality, structure, and local resources. For example, in renovating Bertrand’s house—our first completed project—we used hemp, slats, and a timber frame. This was an early exploration of innovation, bringing natural, local materials into a new project set in a rural area.

BP: Our presence in Brittany allowed us to participate in larger projects as local partners to Parisian firms. This led to our collaboration with HEMAA Architects. Together, we worked on local projects as well as larger public tenders.

YM: Our first competition in collaboration with them was for a Sport Complex in Dinan (Cotes d’Armor), near Saint-Brieuc, in collaboration with HEMAA. Although we were named co-winners, we were ultimately not selected. This first collaboration made us want to develop more projects together. It helped us build a strong partnership with HEMAA and led to quite a few competitions: The Museum of Megalithic Stones of Carnac, the Tribune de Quimper (that we won), a public office in Loudeac, and, more recently, a Cultural Centre in Brest, a Public School in Paimpol, and the New Stadium of Laval. After winning Tribune Quimper, we were invited to another Tribune competition on our own. It’s a kind of ping-pong: the Brittany office supports the Paris office, and vice versa, always working closely together.

To build a strong portfolio, partnering with more experienced firms has become essential. We often collaborate—mostly as the smaller partner alongside larger offices from Paris (HEMAA, Avenier Corneja, PALAST, etc.) or Nantes (recently, with RAUM). But with growing experience, we’re now increasingly taking the lead in these partnerships. We have recently been shortlisted in a competition in the region of Touraine. A smaller local practice reached out (Mesnil Architecture) —they knew the mayor but lacked the references—so we partnered. These collaborations help us stay connected to different territories and project types. It keeps things diverse and interesting—for us and our collaborators. And it’s become a strong part of our office’s strategy.

Material explorations

YM: Whenever possible, we prioritise bio-sourced and local materials, always pushing ourselves to think differently with each project’s material choices. The importance we give to constructive implementations goes alongside a great value on plan, space, and constructive legibility—creating buildings that are meaningful in plan, structure, and space, making each project clear and readable. Take our Tribune project, for example: a large wooden roof supported by two pillars resting on a substantial concrete base. That clarity is a key thread connecting our work—a space that can be easily understood and experienced. Also, our project of Public Office Extension in Montreuil-le-Gast demonstrates our ambition. We duplicated the square shape of the existing building, adding a large patio inside, giving the users a protected outdoor area, and a large common space opening towards the surroundings. 

BP: Sometimes the material is tied to the local context, so it varies from site to site. In the library of Combrit Sainte Marine, we reused stones from the existing building to make the extension. For the Megalithic History Museum of Carnac, we used stones from the existing wall on site in the new building, combined with new engineered materials, in order to reduce the carbon footprint of the project. We try to use something that’s not just local, but that also links to the local context.

YM: Using these kinds of materials might be more expensive, but that’s not the main issue. Often, the primary constraints come from the construction regulations. What’s key is getting everyone on board—the client, the engineers, the architect. We’ve realised that if even one team member isn’t aligned, it might make it impossible to use hemp, rammed earth, or other so-called ‘innovative’ materials. The good thing in France is that politics support the use of these bio-sourced materials. So, when the architect is on board, and the clients—like the mayor or public or social housing developers—are also aligned, you can always find technical solutions. 

Architecture in France is clearly moving in a sustainable direction. It’s a path we want to follow, and one shared by our generation of architects. That helps—when technical challenges arise, you can reach out to friends working the same way and ask for their support.

HM: We’re also not afraid to experiment. It’s time to push limits and explore so-called materials, which often aren’t so new after all. For example, we are developing constructive stone facades in two projects: a 24-unit social housing building in Laval (Mayenne) and a 21-unit social housing building in Issy-les-Moulineaux (Hauts de Seine). Both of these projects have massive stone façades, wood slabs (CLT), and timber frame walls. Though we’d never done a project with massive stone before, we managed to gather a team to accompany us in submitting the proposal—engineers who had either done similar buildings before or who were excited to do them. Our proposal included a structural façade—30 cm thick stone with bio-sourced insulation behind. 

YM: For the roof extension of our project, Boulevard Diderot in Paris, for Paris Habitat (one of the biggest social housing developers), we worked with a very ambitious engineering team. The structure used re-employed steel beams, and the insulation was hay.

HM: The steel beams were re-employed, so the structure has a low carbon footprint. The design process was really interesting. The supplier who brings the beams can’t say how many or what size he’ll have in two years. What he can say is that he always has five-metre beams in stock. So, we designed the entire plan around a return of less than five metres. In housing, that’s feasible. That way, we could tell the client that we’d be able to reuse the beams and build in two or three years—it didn’t depend on what the supplier might have in the future. Reuse is becoming fashionable—it’s very interesting—but the process is tough because you never know how much material will be available. 

YM: These processes are still in their early stages. There’s a missing link between the client or public developer and the company executing the project. How do you secure the material? Where and how do you store it? At what cost? Few companies have clear answers. It’s developing, but there’s still a long way to go.

Beyond fixed programs

HM: We’ve talked about materiality, but there’s also something really important in housing—and in cultural and other projects: uses. In our Brest project—24-by-1 housing in three buildings we won in 2024—we really focused on modularity and how spaces can evolve over the next decade. We looked at the flexibility of space and enhancing shared spaces. For example, the corridor is more than just a dark space with stairs; it becomes a proper social vector that inhabitants can use. 

BP: We needed to build a corridor, so why not make something more of that program piece? It’s an enlarged shared space—3.5 metres wide—where people can put a table and chairs and gather. In Yffiniac, we developed a similar idea with individual space, transforming the garages of the 26 social houses into a modular space that can become an atelier, a workshop, or an extension of the living room. 

YM: The plot there is a long strip with 26 social housing units in a row. We wanted to integrate the garage into each house and play with the skyline in an otherwise uniform neighbourhood. The surrounding context is the same house repeated over and over. So, we introduced typological variations—changing roof slopes, for example—to give each house a distinct identity in a rational way. There are four house types arranged in sequence to create a dynamic silhouette.

BP: Without extending the budget, we proposed something more, initially not needed in the program—something cheaper that brings new value to the project. We could use the savings from the garage to improve the façade, the window quality, and the materiality. The space can change over the life of the program.

Supporting the existing

YM: Our projects are split almost 50/50 between renovation/extension and newly built projects. Even though the densities are not the same in urban and rural areas, we aim at developing more renovations and extensions in order to reduce the carbon footprint and keep the architectural heritage of the territories we build in. In Paris, there are often vertical extensions because of how dense the city is and how little free land there is. We are developing two roof elevation projects. One started in 2024 and is located in the 12th arrondissement overlooking the Petite Ceinture, a former railway now overgrown with trees. For this project, we are working with a private real estate developer specialising in buying the right to build on top of a building while rehabbing the existing structure. We added three stories and a small unit on the side. This project is very small but faces a lot of constraints. This ambition of rethinking the existing buildings is also present in the public projects we design. It is true for the library of Combrit Sainte Marine, the Public Offices extension of Montreuil le Gast, and also the Cultural Centre of la Gare des Mines in Paris. This project accompanies a student housing tower and industrial activities units designed by RAUM. 

HM: That’s interesting because it ties back to what we said earlier about façades and form. We’re into a kind of ‘silent’ architecture—not super shaped, not colourful. It’s more about the radical nature of the materials and the beauty of space and plans. The buildings we design, newly built or renovations and extensions, are the expression of a structure supporting the roof and creating generous spaces that can evolve.