ELLIOTT LAFFITTE BECOMES THE NEW PRESIDENT OF A26

Elliott Laffitte is elected Chairman of A26. Previously Associate General Manager, he replaces Marc Seifert in the rotating presidency of our agency, now ranked 7th architectural firm in France and in the top 100 worldwide. On this occasion, Elliott Laffitte unveiled the major strategic axes that will structure his term of office.

Marc Seifert, left, hands over to Elliott Laffitte, right, who becomes the agency's new President.

AN EXPERT IN HOUSING AND MIXED-USE PROGRAMS

A graduate of the École d'architecture de Paris-Villemin and a graduate of the University of Houston (Texas), Elliott Laffitte joined Lionel Blancard de Léry and Jacques Mouzon's Atelier BLM in 1998, joining the firm in 2006.

In the meantime, he flew to New York for his first experience with CICOGNANI - KALLA Architects, a firm specializing in high-end residential projects, then spent a year in Rio de Janeiro with a Brazilian firm with whom he still works today.

Elliott Laffitte quickly turned his attention to urban and residential planning, alternating between collective, semi-collective and individual housing projects, guided by a desire to respond to changing lifestyles (assisted living, housing adapted to senior citizens, single-parent families, coliving, etc.). He has developed an approach centered on the user and his needs, whether in public or private spaces.

In 2008, the three partners opened a subsidiary in the South of France and diversified their activities by signing contracts for mixed-use real estate programs, facilities (extension of the departure lounge at Terminal 1 of Nice Côte d'Azur airport), offices and senior residences.

In 2012, Atelier BLM and five other specialist firms joined forces to create the A26 architectural practice. That same year, Elliott Laffitte became Associate Managing Director of the new entity, which then had a staff of almost one hundred.

"PUTTING PEOPLE AT THE HEART OF OUR THINKING".

A26's new president thanked the agency's teams for their confidence, and presented his vision and strategic priorities for the future.

"For me, architecture has always been a question of men and women, and that's why I want to put people at the heart of our approach", announced Elliott Laffitte, "Firstly, because today, thanks to our policy of internalization, we are fortunate to be able to count on 180 employees who represent all the design and execution professions. And it's from the sum of all these individual expertises that we draw our first singularity". He is therefore keen to test and implement new ways of working to take cross-functionality and employee skills development even further.

"Secondly, our approach is also characterized by the desire to always adapt to the environments of the projects we position ourselves in. It is therefore essential to continue strengthening our links with local players, who know their territory, its resources and its dynamics, to preserve our ability to make lace". For Elliott Laffitte, it will be a matter of building on the agency's territorial network, currently present in around ten towns, to develop synergies and create forums for exchange between players in the construction and regional planning sectors.

"Finally, we need to keep listening to our fellow citizens, so that we can continue to develop projects that are destined to last. As architects, we need to adopt a more sustainable approach to our work, for example, by questioning the adaptability of our projects to climate change and societal evolutions, or by giving priority to the conversion of existing buildings rather than systematically resorting to new construction, which consumes natural soils", says Elliott Laffitte.

Elliott Laffitte, President of A26

A26: A UNIQUE MODEL BASED ON MULTIDISCIPLINARITY AND INTERNALIZATION

A26 was born in 2012 from the merger of six architectural firms who decided to pool their expertise. The agency is structured around 8 areas of expertise:

Learning (campuses, schools, training centers),
Search (laboratories),
Entertainment (tourism, hotels),
Entrepreneurship (trade, logistics, data centers),
Living (housing, serviced residences, urban planning),
Performance (sports equipment),
Protection (SDIS, gendarmerie barracks, courthouses)
Care (hospitals, medical-social care, psychiatry).

At the same time, A26 has chosen tointegrate all design and execution professions: architects, urban planners, economists, landscape architects, engineers, designers... A strategic vision that does not prevent the agency from reaching out to the outside world to enrich its projects.

This ability to cross-discipline and cross-fertilize expertise enables A26 to position itself in global markets, both in France and abroad. Above all, this type of organization gives the agency agility, making it easier to propose mixed-use programs on the scale of a building or a neighborhood. At a time when land is becoming increasingly scarce, this strategy of interconnecting skills also favours the design of reversibility projects.