BRT-Maison Sensue-L

Recently I received an email from an architectural website*… asking me if I wanted to “shout out” about our projects… Funnily enough… my first gut reaction was to shout NO.

We feel that our projects must respond to a sense of place, patina over time, be appropriated by those that use or interact with these projects either intimately or as part of their urban environment. None of our projects SHOUT…

The feedback from our clients and fans that inspire us are:

• It is as if the building was always there – it fits in seamlessly
• It doesn’t look like “social housing” it looks like “home”
• Before, I was anxious to come home, now I look forward to being there with my family!
• We don’t want to let the world into our home, it is ours! Our happy place…
• I didn’t realize that I could feel at home like this. It inspires me to be better.
• Your work is “contempraine intemporelle” – of our time and timeless…
• Your projects are better in reality than in images… They are places to BE and not just look at…

No shouting, we just aim to make the world better one project at a time… Our buildings are not about US, even though they are designed through our sense of the world we live in, and to respond responsibly to the constraints and needs of our clients. They are custom made – “bespoke” –crafted by an intense sense of responsibility, integrity, and desire for quality dialogue with our clients and the society in which we live. Their materiality, textures, color, contrasts and sense of place give them a life of their own.

Maison Sensue-L / croquis generateur

A lot of our time and effort over the past 15+ years is to sensibilize our clients to the benefits of bioclimatic design – “the corps/body en phase with its environment”. We do not seek to “impose” our ideas on our clients, but rather to accompany them to see beyond the immediate. We love the “exigence” of our clients, and we are very lucky to work with so many terrifically demanding ones!

We do not have a “style”. It is not even important that people “recognize” our architecture. There is no one “view” that “encapsulates” an understanding of one of our projects. They have “facets” that respond to their environment, orientation, air, light, life with-IN and with-OUT(side)… This is perhaps our greatest “commercial” problem to overcome. But we think that our time and effort are integrally related to the quality of our projects for those who will benefit from their construction yesterday, today and far past tommorrow.

We hope that our buildings will outlive us, take on their own lives, be loved by their inhabitants, and evolve naturally in their environment.

We don’t SHOUT… we just dialogue in order to understand… Make our world a better place.

*Names have been erased to protect the innocent…