Graduates of Paris Villemin, Christelle Avenier and Miguel Cornejo met during their studies. After working with Mathias Klotz in Santiago, Chile, and Douglas Deremer Architecte in San Francisco, they founded their practice in Paris.
In 2022, they received the Housing Award from the Academy of Architecture and the Order of Architects. Christelle received the Woman Architect Award and has been a member of the Academy of Architecture since 2024. They have taught together at the Vienna University of Technology (Technische Universität Wien) in Austria, at ESA Paris, at the University of Architecture of Azuay in Cuenca, Ecuador, and at ENSA Paris-Malaquais, where Christelle serves as a member of the Board of Directors.
Each year, Christelle Avenier is a visiting professor at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Nantes and in Mauritius, while Miguel Cornejo participates as a guest lecturer in the MCH (Master in Collective Housing) at UPM Madrid and ETH Zurich.
From Chile to Savoie, their respective native lands, they perhaps inherit a tenacity that leads them "to the fundamentals of materials," a sense of responsibility towards communities that translates into a choice of sustainability, and a natural disposition toward solidarity with artisans, businesses, and also with local residents.
The agency develops projects in Toulouse, Lille, Nantes, and especially in the Greater Paris metropolitan area, with the Lilas residence, co-designed with the Chartier-Dalix agency, followed by a series of projects that play on the complexities of Paris to offer silhouettes that encapsulate the vibrancy of their working-class neighborhoods, highlight the human scale of their purpose, and imaginatively extend the metaphor of habitability down to the smallest recesses of their depths, as well as in the details of their facades and their lightweight, modular furnishings.
Today, the agency is delivering an auditorium for amateur and professional musicians, topped with 51 residential units for the RIVP (French Institute for the Promotion of the Arts). Hybridizing the modernism of its larger neighbors with the neighborhood's brick, stone, and wrought iron moldings, this figurehead makes its spaces partitions of life, its diversity a concert of uses, and everyday life in Paris a celebration, dressed as a mermaid.
The agency is a winner of Europe's emerging "40 under 40" award. The Les Lilas residence and daycare center was selected for the 2014 Equerre d'Argent award, as were the 88 Pantin housing units for the 2019 Equerre d'Argent award in the "Habitat" category and Dareau project in 2024.
