Portraits and Mirrors aims to reflect on one of the most subtle and potentially meaningful challenges architects can set for themselves: the conception of a space for their own practice.

The task is multifaceted: a broad set of concerns is considered, from the pragmatics of daily working conditions, to the necessary soul-searching occurring when one conceives a space for oneselves. This questions what forms a practice can take, how they can relate to an audience, a clientele, or a public, and what kind of exchanges can exist between the workspace of a spatial practice and its other projects. The goal is, not only to make a project, but also to project ourselves, through the projects, and within them.

The studio focuses on a set of relevant precedents to be analyzed and compared. Based on this knowledge, and on the study of a few sites in Geneva, projects for possible contemporary practices are developed taking in account personal and collective desires, as well as the various constraints and parameters of the real.

Ultimately, the projects — as « portraits and mirrors » —should allow to question the role of our discipline. After all, workspaces are also stages in which these things are naturally debated, stages carefully set between the intimate and the public, between the serious and the frivolous.