An ethical dilemma

ML: We belong to a generation caught between two paradigms. We were educated by architects whose references belonged to another era—when success meant working for a prestigious name, mastering the image, and competing for visibility. The implicit message was clear: your ambition should be to enter their system, not to question it. Yet that model no longer matches the world we inhabit.

In school, architecture was taught as a form of abstraction—an exercise in representation, detached from the economic, social, and political conditions that actually produce space. We learned to analyse and to critique, but rarely to act; The profession appeared as something ex-situ, while in reality, architecture only makes sense within life, where conflict and negotiation occur.

When I finished school, I felt a deep gap between what I had been trained to value and what truly mattered: listening, observing, and engaging with people. Architecture isn’t a competition of egos or icons. It’s a slow, collective practice embedded in the everyday. The office culture we could enter was the opposite—long hours, silence, opacity, and a kind of moral exhaustion. That system no longer teaches how to build responsibly; it teaches how to endure.

Refusing that model was both a risk and a relief. We preferred to stay small, to make mistakes publicly, but to stay close to what feels in becoming—something alive and uncertain.

Taking root

ML: After school, we needed space to practice differently. We wanted to confront the ground, the materials, and the environment directly. At that point, it was essential to feel useful, to see things take shape, even at a small scale. We decided to leave France and spend time abroad, and we eventually settled in the Goa region of India. We didn’t have a defined plan—only the desire to work in a context where architecture could still be tied to necessity. We began our journey without a clear destination, but once there, we got involved with a collective that had just started working on a vast piece of land devastated by years of cashew tree harvesting—a territory where local wildlife also needed protection. The land was extensive but severely damaged, so our first project focused on reintroducing endemic species and building lightweight structures that made it possible to live directly on site. Elie set up a small nursery and took care of it daily, while replanting across the site became a collective effort. Within a few years, the area transformed dramatically, growing back into a jungle.

EB: This initiative was named the Ken Kuhn Restoration Projects, after the area itself. When we arrived, people would ask, “Oh, you’re architects?” We’d say yes, and they’d reply, “So, you know, how to build right? Let’s do something.” They gave us two or three hundred euros to build a hut. We spent days and nights drawing, starting with a basic hut—a roof, an A-frame, poles buried in the ground. Then we thought, “Let’s improve it—add more shade, make it thicker, adapt it to the slope, find the perfect spot protected from the sun during the dry season and the rain in the monsoon.” After many drawings, we built the first cabin in three weeks. We eventually stayed for two and a half years.

Intense contexts, real impact

ML: After our experience in India, we sought a way to connect with France and eventually came into contact with an association, Les tout petits, focused on social education, working with children with disabilities and health issues. What we found especially interesting was that this context was neither fully private nor fully public—it was a hybrid. The association received state subsidies, which meant that, without having any formal offices, we stepped directly into a half-public, half-private environment. We carried out a 1,000m2 rehabilitation of the first floor of a collective housing building in Paris, transforming it into an IME (Institut Médico-Éducatif), a SESSAD (Special Education and Home Care Services), and a residential facility for people with rare disabilities. We immersed ourselves for two years on the ground. Being constantly present on site became our main source of knowledge. We were fully engaged with the process, and above all, we built a relationship of genuine trust with the construction company, from whom we learned a great deal.

The spaces where children with disabilities grow and evolve today are often distressing. They tend to reproduce hospital typologies—sterile, over-lit, stripped of any sense of comfort. They obviously reflect the difficulties of certain pathologies that children are facing, but also the fact that the budget is extremely limited.

In this context, you often feel like you could do more. That’s why, with this association—Les Tout-Petits—we’ve now built a mutual trust that allows us to design collectively and with continuity: first schools, and now a new building for the association’s headquarters in Rambouillet, about 50 kilometres southwest of Paris.

EB: These kinds of projects can be intimidating for architects. Some of them are quite far from Paris, and they call for careful rethinking. There are buildings from the ’60s or ’70s where the acoustics, the lighting, and the insulation no longer support the kind of care environments needed today. Disabled children of all ages require attentive and continuous care. At the time, care facilities were conceived as self-contained living units—each including bedrooms, a shared room for play and meals, and bathrooms—integrating all necessary spaces to limit movement, a functional yet constraining logic. Even though this came from a positive intention, the support it provides today is very limited. In our profession, you often say ‘yes’ to whatever project comes up, just to survive. You jump from one thing to the next, from one person to the next. But with long-term projects, with the same people, you actually get the time to build a relationship. And that’s a big privilege.

Reality check

ML: A common thread in our projects is the interest in using and experimenting with bio-based materials to transform the way we build—reducing concrete use, lowering emissions, and prioritising passive, sustainable construction. In theory, it sounds ideal, but in reality, the outcome often differs from our expectations. In our first project for Les Tout Petits, which involved demolishing nine independent dwellings, we aimed to reuse as much material as possible, but soon realised the rules for public and private projects were strict and unclear. Our project—neither fully public nor private—fell through the cracks. The only success was collaborating with two associations that salvaged and reused everything they could from what we demolished—sinks, floors, doors, and more. Then, in response to the strict functional and safety requirements of these spaces, we used highly resilient materials—plastic flooring and double plasterboard walls coated with a soft plastic layer to make them safer and more durable than usual. At the same time, we worked to introduce a more human and sensitive atmosphere—using coloured floors to define spaces, glazed frames to create visual connections, wooden fittings to bring warmth, and wall lamps to provide a softer, more varied light.

Following this approach, we were commissioned to design a private house in Saint-Cloud for a family with three children. The project lasted about two and a half years, but was never built because of COVID and soaring material costs. Materiality is crucial to us. For the private house, and with a better budget, we partnered with Alter-Bâtir, a cooperative of craftsmen and artisans who assembled a team tailored to the project’s needs. The house featured timber framing, straw insulation, and earth plaster inside and out—and on the floor. It was a beautiful collaboration among three companies and the client, whose curiosity and openness towards ecological construction made the process particularly rewarding. 

Losing a house, building a campus

EB: After two years of working on the Saint-Cloud project, just one week before construction was supposed to start, the client called and said, “I’m not going to do it.” It was a disaster for us. But that disappointment was unexpectedly balanced by some surprising news. 

When we returned from India, we had organised an exhibition of my drawings. Alongside it, we produced a small book with images from India: buildings, plans, and short descriptions. Two years later, we were contacted by Terreneuve Architects — a well-known French office with over twenty years of experience in public architecture, including many educational and university projects in overseas and tropical contexts such as Mayotte and French Guiana. Comoros is a small island between Madagascar and the coasts of Mozambique and Tanzania. It was just a week after we had lost the house project. I said, “Okay, let’s do it.” It was completely unexpected. 

The budget was small, but the commission was ambitious: six sites with six new universities to build—a mix of new buildings and renovations—plus paths, landscaping, tree planting, water access, and even football stadiums. Two weeks later, we arrived on the island and began visiting all the sites with the local team. It was a fully public, government-led project. Since there’s no architecture school in Comoros, they looked for architects internationally. The political relationship between Comoros and France remains sensitive, marked by the legacy of colonisation and its complex ending. As a result, our presence as French architects leading the project was met with some initial caution, but after a year of working together, trust slowly built. 

The challenges were immense: seismic activity, a volcano, salt air, typhoons, extreme poverty, and no local factories. We considered using volcanic rock for foundations and earthen bricks, but they are now forbidden—only concrete and metal from Turkey are allowed. The aim was to work with what was available locally and apply basic bioclimatic principles—using orientation, natural ventilation, and protection from rain and heat to achieve comfort with minimal means.

Still, we achieved a few tangible results: using volcanic stones, coloured plasters, and a double-insulated wall acting as a Canadian well, cooling the south-facing façade most exposed to the sun. In the end, what started as a disappointment turned into one of our most formative projects, bridging our experiences from India’s collective experiments, to educational spaces for disabled children, and to designing in the Comoros, where learning and building both depend on scarce water and shared resources.