“Vol entre les deux” offers a conversation between the built production of the first five years of practice of the Sapiens Architectes agency, a collection of inspirations captured in the contexts of intervention, and a reflection on the necessary middle ground of the architect in society, between high and low, between concepts and perceptions.
Presentation of the agency Baptiste Manet and Yann Legouis are associate architects at Sapiens, winner of the Albums de Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes (AJAP) award in 2020 and the Prix National de la Construction Bois award in 2024. The agency focuses its professional practice on locations far from the city centres of large metropolitan areas. In these territories, the boundary between city and countryside is gradually blurring into a grey area consisting of the undifferentiated superimposition of two twin phenomena: peri-urbanisation and peri-ruralisation. Where, for lack of anything better, standardised architecture, from detached houses to agricultural sheds, is sold as everyday consumer products and added to the vernacular heritage, gradually altering the rural or village landscape, the legacy of ancestral human construction and centuries of sedimentation. We therefore see our profession as that of a ‘country doctor’. At the local level, architects are the essential cog in the implementation of urban and architectural quality policy. They are the final intermediary between the various organisations and advisory bodies, the decentralised services of the State and the general public. In a way, they are the lowest common denominator of the general interest, guarantors of a certain idea of built and landscape quality.
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