Joly & Loiret

Paul-Emmanuel Loiret and Serge Joly met in 1993 at the Ecole Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris la Seine. Completing their diplomas in 2001 and 2000 respectively, until 2006-7 they worked in French and foreign architectural practices of international renown, notably at Ateliers Jean Nouvel, Renzo Piano, Jacques Ferrier and for the Services Economiques des Ambassades de France in various countries in Africa. These years of training were also marked by opportunities for travel around the world. One spent time in Canada, Africa, south and central America, the other criss-crossing Asia, both having travelled throughout Europe.

In 2003, having already embarked upon their professional careers, they decided to work together under the name ‘architecture system’. Between 2003-6, in parallel with their work for other architects, they participated in a number of international archi-tecture competitions and undertook small private projects.

They were awarded the prestigious nomination by the French Ministry of Culture to the ‘Nouveaux Albums de la Jeune Archi-tecture’ for 2005-6; a prize given to 20 architectural practices aged under 35 in recognition of their work and their potential for the future. Following this award, they founded JOLY&LOIRET. Since then, the office has had between 6 and 10 employees.

Work has diversified both in the public and private sector, notably for schools, sporting and cultural public commissions, but also in set design, housing and offices. Paul-Emmanuel Loiret and Serge Joly also teach at various Ecoles Supérieure d’Architecture.

A creative approach rooted in environmental context
Over time, Paul-Emmanuel Loiret and Serge Joly have forged a broad architectural and environmental approach with a sen-sitivity towards a simple, vernacular architecture, informed by local cultures and contexts. Today their objective is to create an architecture that is environmentally respectful and culturally representative. In the manner of a landscape designer or land artist, the office’s projects are more than simply functional. They are cultural, determined by a sense of place, its history, its form, its materials and its textures with the aim of creating a space to fit the local context. Each project, conceived with respect for the use of energy and resources, reveals and reflects its environs, as if it had risen from nature.

Most importantly, the office’s projects aspire to be sensitive, efficient, dynamic, sustainable, appropriate and alive, to be poetic, to touch the people who use them. Far from having a formal ideology, Joly&Loiret strive to build an architecture that is concerned not with its own singular presence, but with the actions and events that it might engender.