Coordinating schedules with Benoit Jallon and Umberto Napolitano of LAN [Local Architecture Network] Architecture is hard. They’re busy. Which is just about the best adjective you can wish upon these founders of an (almost) eight-year-old practice. Well, that, and “happy” — specifically with the projects keeping them chained to the drawing board. Oh, but we’ll get to the topic of architectural hedonism yet, believe me.

by Katya Tylevich


Somehow, it’s in the process of trying to find a time to talk, that Napolitano and I end up having a full-blown conversation. Through e-mails and a game of “Pass The Word doc.” we get at what it means to remain a young practice despite gaining a few grey hairs with time (and stress). We also discuss the relationship between architects and rockstars, but it’s not what you think. Really. We talk about private versus public projects, and, yes, we issue a shout-out to Carla Bruni for good measure.

It’s only fitting that Napolitano and I manage to have as round and improvisational a discussion as we do — complete with inflections and asides — in the sometimes over-edited or reserved medium of text. But LAN is behind the publications YOU CAN BE YOUNG AND AN ARCHITECT (an entertaining how-to for and about young firms, 2008) and WELCOME TO SAINT MESMES (a monograph on LAN’s creation of the Marchesini French headquarters, 2009). LAN is the rare example of a firm that can both articulate and practice architecture with enthusiasm and expressiveness. Typically it’s one or the other, right? Or is that just an “architect stereotype”? Napolitano and I discuss some of those, too.


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YOU CAN BE YOUNG AND AN ARCHITECT by LAN

Katya Tylevich: With a book like YCBYA, which helps and promotes young architects, you seem to be developing a friendly architectural community — at least on paper. So is LAN the antithesis of this stereotype of the isolated architect, who’s intrinsically competitive and “members only”?
Umberto Napolitano: I don’t completely agree with your stereotype of the architect. Here in France, an architect is most likely dressed in black and is — by necessity — interested in many aspects and facets of the world of culture. Someone who might be a bit of a jet-setter. That’s not necessarily the case with us, but still. I look around, and I don’t find any isolated or insular architects. Except, maybe, Peter Zumthor.


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YOU CAN BE YOUNG AND AN ARCHITECT by LAN


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YOU CAN BE YOUNG AND AN ARCHITECT by LAN

KT: Well, if you’re not Peter Zumthor, and you’re not jet-setting with all-black carry-on items, how do you see yourself as a practice?
UN: I like Pink Floyd’s story. The band’s sold millions of albums worldwide, their music resounds in any club inscribed with the word “rock,” and we even relate them to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet, nobody really knows the band by face. Whereas the Rolling Stones and Beatles had to be accompanied by bodyguards, [Pink Floyd's] Roger Waters could buy discs in central London without being assaulted. Why? Because Pink Floyd — whose first albums didn’t include group portraits, for example — consciously decided to bet everything on music rather than image. This is the kind of story we want to live up to with our architecture.


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Marchesini Headquarters, Saint Mesmes, France (Photo © Lucboegly.com)

I’m quite sure every practice wants to think of itself as unique, but even so I believe we have quite a different profile in the French panorama. We are interested in finding our own way of doing architecture, in multiplying our experiences, diversifying them and inventing new stories. When it was just Benoit and I, we were constantly overloaded. And if for some reason we weren’t overloaded, we would invent more projects so that we would be. So we are not really jet-setters because we just don’t have the time to be! But we are not isolated because we share our experiences with others.


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Marchesini Headquarters, Saint Mesmes, France (Photo © Lucboegly.com)


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Marchesini Headquarters, Saint Mesmes, France (Photo © Lucboegly.com)

KT: Through YCBYA, for example, you also seem to facilitate an exchange of experiences between other architects.
UN: In my view, community and exchange are connected. For example, we conceived the first YCBYA book not as a finished object, but as a tool to provoke and animate a debate about today’s young architects. The lectures and presentations we gave regarding the book proved rich occasions for exchange. We learned a lot from this process, which is at the heart of how we think of architecture — as a sort of bridge between different fields. From the beginning we tried, at all costs, not to lock our vision into projects, but rather to use projects to enrich our vision of society.

KT: But it’s a two-way street, isn’t it? Whatever new vision you gain from a current project, probably goes into a future project, and so on.
UN: It’s almost a game. When we have a new project, we explore its political, social and cultural context — the cooking and the literature, the people, the professions. Imagine the amount of information you end up with when you begin to multiply projects, typologies, and countries! I like knowing that for a project in Angola I can bring in things I learned from a project in Switzerland.


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94 collective housing units in Bègles, France (Rendering © RSI-Studio.com)

Our collective housing project in Begles, France, is one example of this process: The housing benefits from a very rough winter climate and a very soft summer climate. So, we proposed something between a “Mediterranean way of life” and a German Passive House. As in Germany, our apartments can be completely closed in winter, as hermetically as possible. As in Mediterranean areas, the apartments can also be open in the summertime, allowing inhabitants to live in a ventilated, outside space.


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94 collective housing units in Bègles, France (Rendering © RSI-Studio.com)


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94 collective housing units in Bègles, France (Rendering © RSI-Studio.com)


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94 collective housing units in Bègles, France (Drawing © LAN Architecture)

KT: It seems important for you to practice in a variety of contexts and countries.
UN: We try to expand beyond the French frontiers, to confront new contexts and cultures, which is extremely enriching. Today, the situation in France is extremely strict. New buildings are more the outcome of “what can we make?” as opposed to “what would we like to make?” This often kills innovation and creativity. So building in different countries allows us to experiment with new vocabularies, forms and systems. I remember how in order to realize the concrete rooftop of the Marchesini France Headquarters in Saint-Mesmes last year we had to perform miracles — while in Switzerland, rooftops like these have been realized since the ’90s.

KT: Is there a project to which you feel a particular connection?
UN: There is a sort of morbid attachment to all projects. The EDF Archive Centre in Bure, France above all, maybe, because it is the first important project to be completed next summer, under construction now.


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The EDF Archives Centre in Bure, France, an extremely successful building in terms of energy and environment due to the use of an intelligent morphology, a high performance skin and the use of renewable energies. (Rendering © RSI-Studio.com)

Like others, this project manifests our consideration of the context. To give the impression of a lightweight building in movement, we proposed incorporating stainless steel studs into earth-colored concrete cladding. This solution had the effect of blurring the building’s limits and reflecting the surrounding colors and changing seasons. We are following its construction with great attention, and waiting impatiently for it to be completed.


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The EDF Archives Centre in Bure, France


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The EDF Archives Centre in Bure, France

KT: Do you still think of your practice as “young”? You will be eight year old this year.
UN: Yes, I can say that LAN is still a “young practice.” Just one visit to the agency is enough proof of that. We have a ping pong table, a PlayStation, a Wii, a cocktail bar, a 6m long dining table, a DJ station, a big screen for football matches, an outdoor sun-kissed terrace for when there’s sun in Paris, guitars and amplifiers and a trumpet. At LAN, the feeling is that of an indefinite place rather than an architecture studio. And the oldest architect is Benoit, who is 37. Though I am starting to feel old: I just turned 34 and I found my first white hair! Can you imagine?


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The 486 Mina El Hosn project in Beirut, Lebanon (Rendering © RSI-Studio.com)

KT: You clearly draw from fields beyond architecture, which is evident in this idea of an “indefinite place.” Even the links on your website aren’t purely “architecture” links. How does life beyond architecture inform your work?
UN: Architecture isn’t really interesting when it is not a physical translation of a socio-political vision. So, you can only imagine where our references come from: molecular cuisine, the World Cup, Nike advertisements, the war in Iraq, Jarmusch movies, last night’s love stories, exhibitions, artists we meet, Sarkozy and Carla Bruni, Daft Punk. We actually work with very few private clients. The world interests us — society. In order to understand it, we need to live and accumulate experiences.

KT: A small firm that rarely works with private clients! That’s rare, isn’t it?
UN: When we do work with private clients, it’s for projects where the financial gain is not the mainspring, but rather where quality and innovation are the main objectives. On public projects, we do not have a unique interlocutor who has an overall vision. Rather, we work with different specialists at specific points, and this dynamic opens a great deal of possibilities.


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The 486 Mina El Hosn project in Beirut, Lebanon, consists of a 34 storey Tower, 5 residential blocks and a basement including public gardens and retail galleries. (Rendering © RSI-Studio.com)

KT: In your office, you and Benoit are like two different “specialists” — coming from different countries [Jallon from France, Napolitano from Italy] and interests [i.e. Jallon studied medicine before architecture]. Do your separate “past lives” influence your present relationship?
UN: I have a lot of respect for those who open their agencies alone. I wouldn’t be anything without Benoit and vice versa. Energy characterizes our relationship. And certainly, working as a team lessens the risk of dogmatism. It forces a constant questioning of one’s identity, without necessarily threatening the character of one’s own work.

KT: Has the dynamic in the office changed as the number of people in it has increased?
UN: The dynamic of the agency has changed a lot, and I hope that it will continue to change. We are used to questioning ourselves. But one thing does bother me: a change in the way we relate to people. In the beginning, when there were only a few of us, I could establish very deep relations and exchanges with my colleagues, due to the amount of time I was spending with them. Today, I can’t make this happen anymore, and there are times when I realize I don’t really know everyone who works for me. Now I need to spend more time doing things that pleased me in the past, but are beginning to disappear!

KT: In YCBYA, you mention the great pleasure of winning your first competition. Does anything compare to that thrill, now that it’s several years behind you?
UN: Fortunately, I always take that much pleasure from our work! But in architecture, the notion of pleasure is extremely hard to catch, particularly for a hedonist like me.

KT: How so?
UN: Well, obviously there is pleasure in successful competition results and in sharing our thoughts, but there are many other different sources of pleasure related to architecture. Let me try to explain. The pleasure of music, for example, is physical. Everybody knows it. Just watch someone tap his foot as soon as he hears a song he likes. And I’m quite sure you’ve stayed up dancing all night to music you like. Well, the pleasure of space is also physical. Being in a dark room, or in a bright one, in a place with a strong scent, a particular sight, a new material or special texture — This is all about feeling, and this is architecture. Or rather, these are the elements that make architecture possible.

When I was playing music, I took pleasure in the fact that when I played, I could be delighted by the music, I could hear it almost immediately. But architectural practice is different; at least the way I do it. Between the drawing and the constructed building a long time passes — a long time between the act of playing architecture and the moment in which we can “listen” to it and live it.

Far from being ephemeral, as is the pleasure of dance or music, the pleasure of architecture can be long-lasting and deep. The pleasure is in constructing; in the delight of a certain strategy; in combining a large number of considerations, hundreds of people, mountains of papers, liters of saliva, concrete, lands, materials. Then, to be able to listen, at the end, to the sound of this music, is almost mystical!

KT: You know, you’ve spoken before about the notion of “every project being a first.” But a first project sounds as thrilling as it does frightening.
UN: Yes, I admit, I always feel a mixture of fear and confidence. But without it, really, I couldn’t go any further. I am like that. I need to be scared, vulnerable, in order to give my best.

KT: And on the topic of fear: what can you say to young practices about situations for which they just can’t prepare? No matter how much guidance you give in your books and talks, can you ever ready young firms for the unique series of accidents they’re bound to have?
UN: Improvisation and reaction is at the heart of this profession: Know how to catch opportunities, and believe in them. As for those situations for which you really can’t prepare? Cross your fingers.


Katya Tylevich is a contributing editor for Mark Magazine. She writes for many different publications.
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