Zestful Urban Office

ZUO is a new player in the field of architecture and urban planning, born from the merging of two well-known practices: DGLA and M+R. ZUO was founded to do more. “Zestful Urban Practice” says it all: add enthusiasm and happiness at the very heart of urban and architectural creation is our aim. Our ambition is global: we care about the world because it is where our inspiration comes from. We visit the world to know it better and transform it. We open our practice to the world to invest it and get implied, and build wherever our thinking takes us. We aggregate skills and talents to be every day stronger in what we do. The city through all its forms is our project: it is the place of exchange par excellence, it builds us at the very moment we invent it. ZUO is an urban and architectural research laboratory: cities and buildings of tomorrow are being conceived here. We put zest in creation to promote an awakening architecture that makes people happy!

Convictions

If Architecture is at the same time art and engineering, it also is a thinking process applied to the world we inhabit and transform, and its practice leads architects to build their convictions about the proper way to create the new within the existing. At ZUO, practical approaches do not absolve ourselves from theoretical thinking conducted simultaneously. Such thinking might be kept unrevealed towards the exterior, which explains why it is useful to explain here our philosophy, to talk of scale, context and emotion.

Scale

In regard to the projects it studies, ZUO is faced with a wide variety of scales of construction. Whether our projects reach territorial dimensions, or focus on the manufacture of a simple piece of furniture, it is “accuracy” that must be the measure of all things. Scale is defined by a relation to the human; an understanding of this definition in its mathematical and relational sense is a touchstone of the accuracy we seek. Design approaches developed by, for and in function of the human individual constitute a true creative path, an avenue that we explore and a high road whose elevated views protect us from both formalism and egocentricity.

Context

The importance we attach to context is evident. In reality, context provides both the form and the content of our projects. In the theoretical debate between hyper-urbanism and sub-urbanism, we find ourselves in an uncomfortable position. Due to the sheer size of our projects, we are involved in the construction of megastructures; but, at the same time, for us, the architecture of these gigantic edifices can only be born of the context which, strictly speaking, serves as their matrix. Yet, in all case, the process we apply is a simple one – before us, there is the landscape, even if it is an exclusively urban one; after us, the landscape remains, regardless of whether our projects scratch, lacerate, flatter, or magnify it.

Emotion

Architecture is a source of emotion. Indeed, it is emotional to high degree for, like nature, it surrounds us. Both an object and a receptacle, simultaneously exterior and interior, it holds and contains us. If it hurts us, only sleep will allow us to keep our distance. That is why, while our responsibility is immense, so too is our joy when the buildings we create are imbued with the power to make people happy. In reality, it is the only objective we pursue, to establish, by means of the spaces we design, an emotional relationship with the people that visit or inhabit our creations. Based on Leon Battista Alberti’s triad – necessitas, commoditas, voluptas – this relationship achieves fulfillment in harmony. We have the opportunity to construct buildings – stations and shopping centres – which, by their very nature, play host to the largest number of visitors of any buildings anywhere. A huge number of people either live in or experience our structures, which puts our capacity to stir the emotions to an even more rigorous test.

A practice

ZUO is a pioneer in France in the field of BIM (Building Information Modelling). A member of the BIM France association, ZUO has been working since 2004 on Revit software and is one of the country’s users of reference. All our projects are initially developed in the form of digital layouts, with levels of data integration up to and including complete BIM, depending on the wishes of our clients. Attention to environmental issues is a central aspect of the working methods developed by the firm. Before being a normative affair, environmental quality derives naturally from a swathe of good practices based on experience. It is also, of course, associated with a knowledge of various environmental certifications applied in the building industry and used by the firm’s architects on a daily basis: Certivea, Breeam, Minergie, Leed and Well.

Organization

ZUO has a cluster-like organisation : the head office is the place where conceptual, strategic and cultural decisions are made, around the founding partners Thierry de Dinechin, Philippe Gorce and Yves Simon. The spirit and main orientations of each project is found during creative workshops organized between them. The head office also is the administrative center of ZUO Group, conducted by Iracema Aguiar. The ZUO practices develop projects as architectural studios, under the responsibility of ZUO partners or local directors: Yves Simon in Montpellier, Aymeric Moneste in Paris, Frédéric Hasid in Barcelona, Nicolas Lussiez in Nice.
These practices prove to their clients every day their strong designing capacity, and their urban and architectural ability. They are located in Paris, Montpellier, Nice, Barcelona and Abidjan.