In the Proust’s short questionnaire style, AA questions architects about their profession, their projects, their vision of the future.Today, we meet the office vib architecture, based in Paris and Bordeaux. The two associates Bettina Ballus and Franck Vialet, collaborating together since 2001 at Vialet architecture, created vib architecture in 2013. They have ever since developed a multidisciplinary practice with various partners and a creative architecture giving a particular attention to the form. The agency counts nowadays some 20 employees and has recently delivered the training centre for the professions of the pharmaceutical industry, EACE, in Strasbourg.

Being an architect means…

Bettina Ballus: Being both a producer and an actor on a revolving stage with a perpetually changing backstage.
Franck Vialet: Dream, invent, build.

What would your perfect order be?
BB: A futuristic setting: an Ecumenical Church on Mars, a place of hope.
FV: What would please you?

Architects’ main challenges nowadays?

BB: The inevitable economy of resources will lead us to rehabilitate rather than to keep building, to highly optimize the functional surfaces and make them attractive to users. In fact, if we want to keep surviving on this Earth, people will have to adapt to new ways of leaving and working.
FV: In 2100 there will be 12 billion people on Earth, nearly twice as much as in 2000. We are hence concerned by several subjects: how to design density, rehabilitate, build ecological and sustainable…

Your job in 20 years

BB: Worst case scenario: the architect will just be an item of expenditure amongst others. Fictional scenario : everyone will be persuaded that architecture deeply influence the well-being of people.
FV: Dream, invent, build.

The advice you’d give to a young architect
BB: I think we can not give a universal piece of advice. Everyone has to find his way in the many facets of architect’s job.
FV: Travel, everywhere!

What do you want to transmit to your co-workers?
BB : Be respectful towards all people who work for the construction of a building, without exception, because alone, the architect is nothing.
FV : Express yourself !

The architect everyone should follow
BB: Iggy Peck.
FV: Rosie the engineer.

The project you would have loved to sign
BB: Black is the new color: the exterior of the Axis Viana Hotel, the interior of the Thermes de Vals and Jameos del Aqua for its relationship to nature.
FV: The Alpes.

The other profession you would have liked to practice
BB: Chocolatier for immediate pleasure or aviator for my own happiness.
FV: Pilot.

An inspiring place
BB: Cemeteries all over the world, these cities for the death that say a lot about the living.
FV: The clouds.

An object or a work of art you particularly love
BB: The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, who frees us from the guilt of the solitary act of the creation, and the drawings of Eduardo Chillida, who affirmed being an architect of emptiness.
FV: The wooden huts of Rick LePlastrier.

Visit the office’s website to see all the projects!