HMONP

Client

ENSA Paris Malaquais

Year

2025

An HMONP thesis exploring how BIM expertise and architectural practice reinforce rather than fragment each other.

Overview

Building One's Legitimacy as a Project Architect is the professional qualification thesis submitted in 2025 to ENSA Paris-Malaquais as part of the HMONP program, directed by Emilien Cristia. Written during three years of professional immersion at Atelier Juno — a dual-practice architecture and BIM consulting agency based in Saint-Maurice, Île-de-France — the thesis uses the agency as a living laboratory to examine a question at the heart of contemporary practice: how can technical expertise enrich architectural work rather than divert it? Drawing on direct project experience, field observations, and academic research, it maps a professional trajectory that deliberately bridges BIM consulting, project management, freelance design, and teaching.

Client

ENSA Paris Malaquais

Industry

Architecture

Service

UI / UX Design

Web Development

Content

Duration

6 Months

The Challenge

The architecture profession is navigating a structural crisis: shrinking commissions, an oversaturated market, and the growing pressure of digital tools on practice models. For a young graduate joining a dual-vocation agency, the risk is real — becoming reduced to a technical role while losing sight of the design ambitions that drove the training. The central tension of this thesis is personal as much as professional: how to assert a legitimate identity as a project architect (maître d'œuvre) while operating in an environment where BIM management and Revit training represent the majority of the agency's revenue — and of one's own daily work?

The Solution

Rather than treating the two poles of activity as competing, the thesis reframes BIM expertise as an extension of architectural practice — not a detour from it. Through a series of case studies (a residential permit in Chelles, construction site supervision on a medical-dental practice in Villepinte, BIM assistance missions at AREP, KKAA, and Patriarche, and a public procurement bid for the RIVP), the author demonstrates how navigating across agencies, project scales, and phases builds a rare transversal competence. The thesis is itself an example of this approach: illustrated with manga-style comic plates and architectural drawings, it presents professional reflection through the same graphic language the author uses professionally — refusing the separation between technical rigour and visual storytelling

The Result

The dossier was submitted and defended before a jury at ENSA Paris-Malaquais in 2025, receiving unanimous congratulations. It is accompanied by an interactive online logbook documenting the full 2022–2025 professional trajectory at Atelier Juno. Beyond the qualification itself, the thesis articulates a clear professional project: a practice of architecture that combines project management, BIM expertise, and training — positioned not as fragmentation, but as a deliberately integrated and socially engaged identity.