Studio Julien Lanoo has been named ‘World’s Best Photography Studio’at the 2021 Architizer A+Firm Awards.

Jury statement 

“The jurors expressed their admiration for the evolving work of firms working at the forefront of contemporary design. The A+Firm Awards reveals that innovation and design forward-thinking need not exclude thinking around sustainability, access, and equity,” said juror Charles Renfro, Partner, Diller Scofidio + Renfro. “It was heartening, particularly in the small and medium-size firm categories, that these issues are now seamlessly embedded in younger architect’s design approaches without sacrificing thrilling and elegant formal solutions.”

The biggest plaudits were saved for firms responding in dynamic ways to evolving global challenges, which continue to impact the daily lives of millions around the world. “It was heartening to find a large number of practices clearly passionate about some of the most pressing issues of our time: inclusion, economic resiliency, climate change, and, most immediately, the pandemic,” said juror Kathryn Firth, Partner at FPdesign. “As an urban designer, I was especially encouraged by the number of projects that were not only responsive to their context but committed to making a meaningful contribution to the wider social and physical setting.”

Julien Lanoo’s photography is a documentation of the built environment. He looks at the architectural world with a deep understanding of its historical and social layers as well as the visible and intangible connections between nature, light, and materiality. Lanoo’s photographic career has covered such topics and fields as architecture, design, social integration, urban transformations, and their dwellers.

His work has been exhibited widely, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Chicago Architecture Biennial, the Cité de l’architecture in Paris, and the Deutsches Architekturmuseum, among others. He co-authored, together with Julien de Smedt, the book “Built Unbuilt” revisiting 16 years of JDSA’s work, and most recently his photographs appeared in “The Vitra Campus: Architecture Design Industry”. His never-ending search for the intricate relationship between the human being and his surroundings, a central subject in his photographs, was presented in 2018 as In[Cognitus], a monographic exhibition at the WAAO in Lille, France.

‘I perceive architectural photography as a way to capture a very specific moment of

time, aspirations and problematics, the human condition. The spatial relationship

between a user and his/her surroundings uncovers hidden stories and meanings,

marking history at a single, specific instant of time. The builder, the passerby, the

woman waiting at the bus stop: they are all unaware that they are protagonists

(“incognito” figures) in that they are generating a new milieu.

For me, it’s a way of telling a human story. Storytelling has uncovered ways of bringing

knowledge mainly based on subliminal stimuli that enforces its content. For centuries, knowledge has been brought to remote nomad communities through storytelling.

The Raoui, or Shadi, were storytellers who would bring news and knowledge to

each other in a captivating form and language, ready to be passed on and always

remembered. Architecture is built with a purpose, whether it be social, economic, or

political, and can be seen as a romanesque association between man and his intellect,

evolution, and history. Arguably, the value architecture has is not what its creators put

upon itself, but how it “lives”

and serves its users. I incorporate these elements into my work, by reading situations,

observing the community in the context of the architecture that focalises the area,

adding to the “objective” reading of architecturec the “subliminal” layer of the modern

man, and a historically specific flow.’

- Julien Lanoo

Testimonials

Photography is raw material.

Share, tell, imagine, project yourself… tool for ubiquity.

A raw soil. A sensitive Statement. A revelation, always.

Photography is the opportunity to multiply, to see elsewhere at another time, under another sky, discovering other lights…

Then, check the hypotheses, validate, invalidate, consolidate, destroy, start over yes... but stronger.

One thing is certain, I do not know of anything comparable to the excitement that seizes me before

discovering the images of my photographer a few hours after returning from reporting.

– Aurélien Coulanges, Partner Architect to Ateliers Jean Nouvel

Conceptually, building performance is machinic because it presupposes some mode of execution that can be optimized or improved. Agbogbloshie Makerspace Platform enacts these ideas through ensemble

work: spacecrafting is not about building in a classical sense. Not only because it was co-designed in and around the scrapyard, this form of architecture is ephemeral, more about cycling materials in real time...coproduction with peers. Julien Lanoo’s photo set of AMP spacecraft captures the first prototype in situ at the edge of the Agbogbloshie scrapyard in Accra: members of the AMP Makers

Collective working with electronics out of the waste stream, tinkering with 2nd-generation “E-Source” copper shredder machine (Hal Watt and Matt Bachelor), working to amplify possibility. The project has evolved since, with technology transfer out of Agbogbloshie to Senegal, Florida, Pennsylvania and Germany. In a way, that is what makes these photographs like magic: they capture a moment in passing, like myriad others most of the world unobserves, wherein people reconstruct their own micro-territories and collective environment in stepwise fashion. Architecture typically overlooks such spaces, but they hold key to more regenerative approaches to living on this planet and next: architecture of the smart city is not unlike an armature for e-waste; but these photographs remind us that maybe we can coproduce from participatory experimentation with grassroots innovators more inclusive approaches to crafting our spaces, mobile architecture made out of cyclical material flows.

– DK Osseo-Asare, Co-founder and Principal of Low Design Office (LOWDO)

Julien’s photos always have a surprising element, something itchy, that gives a certain kick and that

connects the “ideal” with reality. Like sea salt with chocolate.

– Anna Heringer, Studio Anna Heringer

For high-res images, please contact Julien Lanoo at julien@julienlanoo.com