Interview with architects Laurent Boudrillet, Bernard Guillien, Anne Pezzoni and Jacques Sebbag, partners of archi5 office, founded in 2003, based in Montreuil and Varsovie. For AA, they share their views on the profession, their sources of inspiration as well as their visions of the future.

Since its creation, archi5 has completed several public equipment projects, private orders and urban planning projects in France and around the world. In 2018, the office completed the La Fontaine multisport complex in Antony, near Paris. Archi5 is currently working on different cultural projects in France, such as a cultural centre in Garges-lès-Gonesse (to be completed in 2021), and a community media library in Sainte Geneviève des Bois (to be completed in 2019).

 

 

Being an architect means…
AP : believing that places can influence life
JS: forgetting to be one
LB: simply creating places of life and sociability interacting with the urban context
BG: live one’s passion

The new challenges of the profession
AP: the same the world is facing: ecology and living together
JS: adding skills, subtracting ego
LB: keep on designing in a Kafkaesque regulatory framework
BG: preserving our intellectual and architectural independence in front of present and future environmental and social challenges

Your ideal commission
AB : a hut in Coubisou
JS: sweetbreads with morels
LB: a tectonic, invisible project
BG: my house, the place I live in

Your job in 20 years
AP: site-focused, detached from the architectural object
JS: if we are not careful, it will no longer exist
LB: I do not even dare imagining, with the ELAN act
BG: more architecture, less technical and administrative constraints

The advice you’d give to a young architect
AP: be free
JS: find the balance between intuition and reason
LB: passionately defend your ideas and beliefs
BG: believe in your talent

What you want to transmit to your co-workers
AP: the desire to go beyond the commission
JS: the taste for risk and commitment
LB: a sincere approach
BG: keep on going and always do better

The young architect everyone should follow
AP: Claire Schorter
JS: Junya Ishigami
LB: Junya Ishigami’s dreamlike world

The project you would have loved to build
AP: I admire a lot of projects, but signing them, that’s a ‘Zorro’ affair
JS: the Neue Nationalgalerie by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
LB: the Soulages Museum, by RCR, in Rodez
BG: the Louvre in Abu Dhabi

Another career you’d have liked to pursue
AP: airline pilot
JS: frogman
LB: between landscape and Land Art
BG: pianist

An inspiring place
AP: Venice
JS: the sea
LB: the great territories of Cormac McCarthy’s books
BG: London

A book, an object, a piece of art you particularly like
AP: Bellini’s portraits
JS: Livio Vacchini’s book Capolavori
LB: Bashung’s version of Gainsbourg’s L’homme à tête à chou song
BG: Henry Moore’s Mother and Child, and L’art de bâtir les villes, by Camillo Sitte

To know more about archi5, click here.

In its 410th issue, AA presented the Léo Lagrange stadium project, completed in Toulon in 2013; click on the image below to read the full article.