Ferrier Marchetti Studio is a Paris and Shanghai based architecture studio. Our work was awarded with numerous international awards, and has been the subject of several monographic exhibitions worldwide.
In 2010, we launched the research lab Sensual City with the philosopher Philippe Simay.
Jacques Ferrier and Pauline Marchetti are further involved in a wider thinking of architecture and the city through teachings, essays and lectures.
Methodology:
Ferrier Marchetti Studio implements strategies that transform ideas into actions and develop innovative project solutions. Our approach relies on different kinds of actions that answer and feed each other:
• Involve the client in a constant co-design process
• Articulate knowledge and know-how by bringing together a wide range of diverse fields around a transversal and collaborative methodology
• Be and remain at the cutting edge of innovation thanks to a strong research and development division
• Create innovative tools that enhance representation and experimentation of architecture (sensitive map, VR) for clients, elected officials and citizens;
• Share and provide our expertise, thanks to a prospective editorial production
About
Jacques Ferrier is an architect and urban planner. Following his architectural training at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville and the École Centrale de Paris, he created his own architecture firm in Paris in 1993 and has since worked in France and internationally. His work follows a clear philosophy and aims to create architecture and cities for a creative and sustainable society. Jacques Ferrier is the author of a number of articles and books and has been the subject of monographs, notably The Architecture of Jacques Ferrier (Thames&Hudson, London). He was named Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite and Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.
Pauline Marchetti is a qualified architect graduated from the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville, and a teacher at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs de Paris. She develops a humanist approach to architecture propounding design and research methods which are based on the sensory dimension of space. Pauline Marchetti is laureate of the Europe 40Under40 Award by which the European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies celebrates the next new talented generation of European architects and designers.
Pauline Marchetti and Jacques Ferrier started collaborating in 2008, when they designed the French Pavilion for the Shanghai World Expo. Since then, they have developed a significant portfolio that combines research and architecture.
Their work has been the subject of several international exhibitions including “Impressionismus” at the Architektur Galerie of Berlin; “Non Oppressive Design” at the DOKK1 in Aarhus and “A Vision for the Sensual City” in Beijing, Shanghai, Manila, Singapore, Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.
The Design Center of the University of Quebec in Montreal dedicated a monographic exhibition to their work, “Entre-Deux”, in autumn 2019.
Pauline Marchetti and Jacques Ferrier lecture widely at prestigious venues, including Columbia University GSAPP, Harvard University Graduate School Of Design and the AIA Center for Architecture. Their work has been published in a wide range of prominent books and magazines, including Arca International, Details, National Geographic and Time Magazine.
Team
Ferrier Marchetti Studio team includes:
• Ninon Barray • Amela Begovic • Marion Bernard • Ezgi Basli • Brigitta Bertolini • Martial Boucheron • Silvestru Cania • Xiaoyong Cheng • Emmanuel Coudert • Jacques Ferrier • Léo Figuet • Valérie Garachon • François Gastesoleil • Fabien Goutelle • Anne Grosset-Brun • Jue Hou • Stéphanie Legrand • Zhaohan Li • Yang Liu • Pauline Marchetti • François Marquet • Sandra Nataf • Aurélien Pasquier • Baptiste Pery • Clémentin Rachet • Juliette Saloux • Gabriel De Sercey • Tingqiu Shen • Wen Shi • Philippe Simay • Ana Rosa Soria • Yu Su • Qiao Wang • Tianyuan Yao
Selected Awards
• ABB Leaf Awards (Shortlisted) • ADC Award • American Architecture Prize • AMO Prize • Architecture Masterprize • Architizer A+Award • BEX Awards • Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite • Chevalier des Arts et Lettres • Harvard's Veronica Rudge Green Prize in Urban Design • Industrial Solar Architecture Prize • International Architecture Award • MIPIM Award • Moniteur Prize • Nomination for the Equerre d’Argent Prize • Nomination for the Grand Prix national de l’Architecture • Trophée Eiffel d’architecture acier • Trophées Bois Ile-de-France • World Architecture Festival Award (Highly Commended Mentions)
Work
Innovative Places of Work:
• Grand Central Saint-Lazare, Paris • Paris Region Headquarters, Saint-Ouen • 3M France Headquarters, Cergy-Pontoise • T20 Xujiahui building, Shanghai • La Courrouze Offices, Rennes • Quatuor, Angers • CPAM Morbihan Heaquarters, Vannes • Metropole Rouen-Normandie Headquarters, Rouen • DCNS Campus, Toulon • AMDM Headquarters, Montpellier • Yidian Offices Campus, Shanghai • Hachette Livre Headquarters, Vanves • EDF Offices, Tours • Euralille Offices, Lille • Claude Bernard Offices, Paris • Shopping center Pacific, Shanghai • Sulwhasoo Flagship Store, Hong-Kong • Piper-Heidsieck Headquarters, Reims • Offices Building Les reflets du Drac, Grenoble • RATP Offices, Paris • Commercial Court, Nice • SAGEP Water treatment Plant, Joinville-le-Pont • Total Energie Offices, Toulouse
Mobility:
• The Greater Paris Metro Stations, Paris • Bridge, Choisy • T9 tramway maintenance and warehousing center, Orly • Tramway maintenance and warehousing center, Bordeaux • Airbus Delivery Centre, Toulouse • « Green Eye » Carpark, Soissons • Air France Maintenance Hub, Roissy • Tramway maintenance and warehousing center, Valenciennes • Tenesol Head Office and Factory, Toulouse • Renault Vehicule Testing Facility, Guyancourt
Education / Research:
• Collège de France, Paris • International French School of Beijing, Beijing • Marcel Saupin House of Human Sciences, Nantes • Louis Jouvet High School, Gamaches • Isomer Laboratories, Nantes • INRIA Laboratories, Paris • Interregional Laboratories, Oullins • Rehabilitation Center, Pont d'Héry • Zhuqiao High School, Jiading • University library and building, Lille • Ecole des Mines Research Centre, Evry
Culture / Leisure / Sport:
• CO’Met - Arena, congress and convention center, Orléans • International congress center, Shanghai • La Tuilerie Cultural Center, Limoux • Arena Restructuration, Lunel • Aqualagon Waterpark, Marne-la-Vallée • French Pavillon at the Shanghai World Expo • Eric Tabarly Sailing museum • Emigration Museum, Tourouvre • Multi-purpose Hall, Le Cannet • Palace Heritage Museum, Xi’An
Residential/Hotel:
• La Mantilla Residential Buildings, Montpellier • Jardins de la Lironde Residential Complexe, Montpellier • Matinha Residence and Hotel, Lisbon • Tour Lumière, Tours • 4* Eco-residence for Leisure Activities, Cap d'Agde • Housing Complexe, Romainville
Clients
• 3M • AEFE Ministère de l'Europe et des Affaires étrangères • Air France • Airbus • Amore Pacific / Sulwhasoo • BNP Paribas RE • Bouygues Construction • Bouygues Immobilier • CCI de Nice • Champagnes Piper & Charles Heidsieck • China Fortune Properties • COFRES SAS • Collège de France – OPPIC • Communauté d’Agglomération du Pays de Lorient • Communauté d’Agglomération du Soissonnais • Communauté de Communes du Haut Perche • Communauté de Communes du Limouxin • Communauté Urbaine de Bordeaux • Compagnie de Phalsbourg • Conseil Départemental de la Somme • CPAM du Morbihan • Covico • DDE de Loire-Atlantique • DDE Des Alpes-Maritimes • EDF • Editions Hachette Livre • Eiffage Travaux Publics • Fayat Immobilier • Fondation Arc-en-Ciel • Geoxia • Global Century Exhibition & Travel Development • Groupe Giboire • Groupe Blot Pierre Promotion • Groupe Hydro Building Systems • Groupe Legendre • Groupe Proméo • Groupe SNI • Housing Development Department of Qingpu District • Hudson Advisors • ICADE • Ile-de-France Mobilité • Jinqiao Lingang • Lafarge Holcim • Ligne Roset • Loire Océan Métropole Aménagement • Lujiazhui Group • Métropole Rouen Normandie • Mines ParisTech • Ministère de la Justice • Ministère de l’Economie des Finances et de l’Industrie • Mutuelle des Motards • Nacarat • Naval Group • Nexity • Orléans Métropole • Pitch Promotion • Poste Immo • PSA • RATP – SEDP • Rectorat de l’Académie de Lille • Régie des Transports de Marseille • Région Occitanie • Renault SA • SADEV 94 • SAGEP • SDIS 44 • SERM Aménagement • SEMDO • Semurval • SET • Shanghai East Bund Investment Group • Shanghai Huanyu Pacific Digital • Shanghai Jiading Administration Committee • Shanghai Land • Shanghai Municipal Leading Group for Development of Huangpu River Banks • Société du Grand Paris • SOGEPROM • Tenesol • The Carlyle Group • Urbiparc Management • Villages Nature (Pierre et Vacances / Disney) • Villamoura World • Ville de Boulogne-Billancourt • Ville du Cannet • Ville de Lunel • Ville de Nancy • Ville de Paris • Ville de Saint-Germain-en-Laye • We Love Green • Woodeum • Xi’An Qujiang Daming Palace Heritage
Ferrier Marchetti Studio is a unique studio combining research and practice in a quest for innovation and urban delight. Our process and design explore a new urban condition, finding and developing opportunities for cities to contribute positively to the planet's eco balance and create a positive relationship between climate and design. Our architecture is not just about designing objects, but about the opportunities that design offers to create positive and meaningful relationships between buildings and people, contributing to a more holistic, sustainable and sensual world.
- Resonance : Our architecture moves beyond the purely aesthetic consideration of objects to create meaningful relationships between people, spaces and places.
- Synergy with climate : Buildings shall accept and adapt to climate rather than deny it: we design buildings which expose or protect themselves as and when needed.
- Useful Aesthetics : We seek an intense material presence, using everyday resources to better reveal their potential.
- Senses and pleasures : We design from a humanistic perspective, with pleasure in mind, seeking to enhance the quality of life through the blurring of disciplinary barriers to create whole experiences.
- Details that matter : Our work celebrates the micro as well as the macro, with a sensual focus on material, details and craftsmanship.
- Built Landscapes : Our approach is not just about a few superficial areas of greenery, rather it is the integrated physical expression of ecosystems developing within the very heart of the city.
- Mobility and Balances : We aim at designing mobility infrastructures that seek opportunities to create thriving public spaces.
- Meaningful Context : Our process is permeable, allowing aspects of an individual project, related to its location and history.
Sensual City Papers is a publication of Sensual City, Ferrier Marchetti Studio's research lab. Self-published, Sensual City Papers appears as a free contribution to the debate on rethinking the city:
- SCS Papers #7 : PDF Let’s stop building! At a time when it is necessary for cities to drastically reduce their carbon footprint, the intelligent and limited use of resources is to become a central value to architecture. We propose several criteria for assessing the choice between restructuring an existing building and its possible demolition-reconstruction.
- SCS Papers #6 : PDF Everywhere in the Mediterranean arc, the same questions are being asked, concerning environmental risks, the intensification of uses and the ever-growing attraction of coastal territories. Both desired and threatened, these territories represent an opportunity to invent a sustainable and sensual city.
- SCS Papers #5 : PDF The desire for an office reappears, transformed, at the very moment when its detractors were predicting its certain death. This is an opportunity to propose a new vision vision: an architecture that intensifies collective life and and allows everyone to find their place, both literally and in a symbolic sense.
- SCS Papers #4 : PDF The question of children in the city has often been approached through the prism of the playful city, and in particular the production of playgrounds that assign them to recreational spaces. However, the city can become a place that is more conducive to children's development and to transmission between generations.
- SCS Papers #3 : PDF For the general public, conventional modes of drawing are abstract. The fictional approach is the one that best reflects the reality to come: sensitive cartography, narrative, storyboard, film, virtual reality release an imaginary world in which everyone can project themselves.
- SCS Papers #2 : PDF To meet the challenge of urban resilience, architecture must give meaning to sustainable ways of living. The balcony is that in-between space which creates a controlled continuity between the interior and the exterior, the public and the private. It reconciles the body of the city dweller with nature and the climate.
- SCS Papers #1 : PDF What lasts is what can change. Three examples of constructed situations (ageing of the French population, growing precariousness of students and mutations of family model) use a wooden Meccano to tune in with the evolution of uses and enrich our modes of living.
A selection of publications that’ve been edited by the studio
Essais
2021, 12×18.5 cm, Sensual City Books
Essays 2020-1996 retraces Jacques Ferrier's architectural, urban and intellectual thought through 20 texts compiled in an anti-chronological manner: a primer, mood bills, excerpts from publications, a manifesto, articles and an interview.
La ville machine
2021, 13.3 cm × 18.5 cm, 144 Pages, L'Herne ed.
The pandemic has revealed the inability of cities to take care of their inhabitants. Based on this observation, this essay questions the dominant role that technology has taken on in our metropolitan lives, and considers the health crisis as an opportunity to put the human being back at the centre of the urban project.
A History of Thresholds
2018, 15×21 cm, 184 pages, JOVIS ed.
Thresholds are anthropological constants: they can be found in every culture and every era. Like limits and borders, they express one of humanity's fundamental relations to space. Places where spaces are separated and connected, thresholds are also metaphorically potent across cultures.
Mindwalks in Shanghai
2016, 180×28.5 cm, 8 leporello, Sensual City ed.
Between August 17 and September 14, 2015, we went on eight walks, each taking place within a clearly defined area measuring precisely one square kilometre. The aim was to immerse ourselves in a portion of Shanghai to absorb its atmospheres and recount them in a graphic narrative form.
Belle Méditerranée
2015, 26.5×20cm, 228 pages, Archibooks ed.
The book examines the Mediterranean urban ensemble through uses, sensations, atmospheres and emphasizes the how, from Genoa to Barcelona 10 million inhabitants live in the same landscape, facing the Mediterranean Sea and most often leaning against the marked reliefs of the hinterland.
La Possibilité d'une Ville
2013, 20.5×12.5 cm, 120 pages, Arlea ed.
We are experiencing a profound changes in the urban way of life, a changes that affect most of the population and the entire planet. These changes call for new ways of thinking about the city. Far away from generic architecture, caught in the spiral of unbridled production, we shall imagine new possibilities.
Architecture = Durable
2008, 19×30 cm, 264 pages, L'Arsenal ed.
The architecture for a "sustainable society" is a great opportunity for the renewal of architecture and of its very place in our global society. We shall take this opportunity to use new technologies and materials and really seize the occasion of being part of economic and social issues that concern our planet as a whole.
Concept Office
2005, 25×16.6 cm, 148 pages, AAM ed. - Ante Prima ed.
The project is experimenting with the most innovative building technologies adapted to the new ways of working, while ensuring from an energy point of view to consume less and better, exploiting all current performances in renewable energies.
Useful
2004, 16×24 cm, 256 pages Ante Prima ed.
Built on the metaphor of a train journey, the book lets images parade: "I am looking for a simple and direct response to the programme and a constructive evidence with the aim of creating, above all, a useful work which would find its place in society.
Strategies of Availibility
2000, 17×24 cm, 288 pages, Passage Piétons ed.
Anonymous, often modest buildings, industrial constructions, technical facilities and infrastructures: all sorts of objects, signs and images contribute to generating the contemporary landscape. They are directly related to time, technology, economics – hence, to life.
Making Of
2007, 19×30 cm, 144 pages, Ante Prima ed.
This book presents the development of two projects for an environmental skyscraper of a new generation. It is not an exercise in style, but rather a possible version of future cities that puts the emphasis on ecology, sustainibility and resiliency.
Pavillon France
2010, 24×16 cm, 2008 pages, Archibooks ed.
Following a 2009 colloquium at the Collège de France Paul Ardenne, Alin Corbin, Michel Hoessler, Anne Lacaton, Christian de Portzamparc, Philippe Simay and other prominent masters of their disciplines contributed on the five senses in their respective disciplines.