LAN (Local Architecture Network)

LAN Architecture was created in 2002 by Benoit Jallon and Umberto Napolitano, architects DPLG, who graduated from Paris-La Villette architecture school in 2001. The work of LAN Architecture was selected by the French Culture Minister for the New Albums of the Young Architects Award (Nouveaux Albums des Jeunes Architectes) in 2004. Benoit Jallon and Umberto Napolitano met while they were studying in a franco-american workshop. Then, they collaborated with several agencies, with international reputation. They quickly decided to team up in order to confront their ideas and design together by creating their own agency in 2002. The name they chose reflects their approach. “LAN” means Local Architecture Network. “For us, it is important to express the idea of network that represents the architecture interdisciplinarity. Local, refers to the importance of context and environment in each project. Our work is away from a formalist discourse and from an aesthetical approach which too often refers to a stylistic mode, desperately searching for a signature.” LAN Architecture uniqueness resides in strategic analysis of a situation that leads to a sensible and appropriate answer to a problematic. “The starting point is observation, searching for the “space delight”, which means looking for the details that provide the architecture project its ambiance and its uniqueness.” “We want to conceive an irreplaceable object, by making its intrinsic specificities correspond with its environment. Possibilities are always multiple, but the answer stays singular. Once it is conceptualized and formulated, that answer becomes a long-lasting project.” LAN Architecture lead a work based on the observation and the knowledge of the urban, social, environmental context, to develop their own project guidelines and give life to an innovative aesthetics and a formal coherence of the architecture. Thanks to their dimensions mastery, the comfort and the innovation in the space practices, they give life to a refined architecture, endowed with a strong identity and well integrated into its context.