FRES architectes is formed by Laurent Gravier and Sara Martin Camara. Coming from different cultures (France, Spain), and after working experiences in foreign countries (Denmark, The Netherlands, ) we are interested by new ways of doing and thinking.

The figure of the isolated architect taking all decisions in his studio is over, it is the time of consensus and collective decisions. Competitions are a way to access commissions, which means that we have to produce a “result” in a short time. As a result we think that proposing a strategy instead of a finished form is interesting. We set up rules which will be the basis for the coming project, keeping an infinite number of possibilities within the concept. That allows the project to absorb the changing conditions without loosing its principles. Time becomes then a material to work with that keeps the project alive.

Within these basis each project, whatever the scale, becomes a new field of research, with its specific context and problematics. At the same time there are also generic themes that reappear: density, atmospheres, rythms, series...The project should be able to generate new relations between existing elements, and to create new perceptions in its surroundings and make people feel emotions. We think architecture aims to be more experimented than understood. In order to achieve these goals, choices are made mixing empirism and intuition. Ideas generate models and models suggest new ideas. It’s a going up and down between the abstract-ideas- and the concrete-objects-, sometimes dreaming but never forgetting that the ideas will disappear and the object will stay.