The studio develops diverse programs, from micro to macro, from small architectural objects to territorial scale projects. The clients are both public and private. The studio escapes from the idea of programmatic specialization and designs projects for working spaces, concert and theatre halls, sport and cultural facilities, housing, mixed-use buildings, etc.

Each time, the will to escape ready-made solutions or transposition of recipes implies a research process to offer pertinent and original solutions that draw their substance from the specificity of the milieu where the project is implanted. The architecture seeks to reveal existing forces, energies, to find each time the right solution to a given situation. This method, starting from the milieu, produces very diverse buildings ; the recurrence comes from the process rather than from the formal result.

In the field of technical aspects as well as that of new ways of inhabiting, research and innovation is a major part of the office’s activity. The aim, amongst others, is to invent architectural gestures to answer social and urban contemporary issues such as densification, mixed and complex programmes, organising coexistences, improving everyday living conditions, and our relationship with nature and the elements.

Technically, the office brings together architects aiming for optimal mastering of the construction process. Every single detail is drawn and developed during the design phases, then controlled on-site to ensure fine quality finish so that the built structure remains true to the designed project. The objective, working with our partner engineering offices, is to optimize the buildings for more energy sobriety. Our work is beginning to integrate a “low-carbon” process.

The office’s work includes the Cité Internationale de Rennes, the Brest Arena, the World Head Office of Skis Rossignol, the Bicycle Building, the 9/9bis mine conversion in Oignies. Concert halls (La Belle Electrique in Grenoble, the Metaphone, the SMAC in Evreux) or the Anglet Theatre. The main in progress projects are a mixed-use building (animation cinema school, offices, student residences) in Cesson-Sévigné ; the MuMO museum-truck for the Centre Georges Pompidou ; the reconversion and extension in timber structure of a 1960s building in the center of Lyon ; an office building in timber structure in Saint-Jacques-de-la-Lande, etc.

Alongside the architectural practice, Yves Arnod and Isabel Hérault also teach. Yves Arnod has taught for ten years at the Grenoble School of Architecture and Isabel Hérault at the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. They regularly run international workshops and give lectures abroad.