Coldefy is an international architecture and urbanism practice that maintains offices in Lille, Paris, Shanghai and Hong Kong. With completed and ongoing projects around the world, the practice engages in private and public projects at all scales.

Partnership
After having worked in renowned international offices in London, New York and Paris, Thomas Coldefy and Isabel Van Haute joined Coldefy in 2006 where they immediately won the international competition for the Hong Kong Design Institute, in front of 162 teams. This project is a manifesto: it embodies their approach and values and launches the office which is developing projects at the regional, national and international levels. Their projects, public and private, cover all fields: education, culture, sport, housing, retail, urban planning.
By revisiting typologies of everyday buildings, architects shape the human environment, design stimulating spaces, and forge social connections.

Approach
What are my needs? What do I want? By asking ourselves these simple questions we return to the fundamentals that define the attitude we stand for and could be described as “new pragmatism”. The need to escape a frenzied way of living, a yearning for calm or a connection with nature are among the fundamental needs that we experience as children, yet which we lose sight of as time goes by.
Aware that the buildings we inhabit influence our behavior and shape our cities, we believe that architecture should serve the senses that allow for memorable experiences.
We are focused on social and sensory experiences, so that the question of aesthetics, which is inevitably subjective, takes a back seat. Individual and community energies, circulations and the project brief all influence the form that emerges. In this sense, we practice sensitive architecture.