1. History
PRAXYS is a French landscape and urban planning agency founded by Thomas Boucher, landscape architect and urban planner, winner of the Albums des Jeunes Architectes et Paysagistes 2009 (Ministry of Culture award), based in Montreuil (Paris). It is involved in the creation and transformation of landscapes, territories and cities, through the creation of cityscapes, public spaces, parks and gardens.
With around a hundred projects since its creation in 2007, the agency today brings together some fifteen versatile landscape architects, urban planners, architect-urbanists and designers gathered around Thomas Boucher and Benoît Fagnou, who partnered in 2021. Both are graduates of the École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles.
2. Concerns
PRAXYS has developed a great sensitivity to the existing, to the memory of places and to their geography. Their approach is therefore based on the inventive description, driven by a sense of wonder at the world’s theatre: surveying, discovering and examining a place, its ancient maps, slope breaks, satellite photographs or weather records, immersing oneself in its culture, its natures, perceiving the stories of the people who live there.
Each project is guided by urban and territorial thinking, enabling us to invent singular, attractive and lively spaces, in dialogue with the context and in the service of sustainable places. “PRAXYS” means the transformation of a state of nature or a social state. The agency’s work is based on the search for the right balance in the transformation of these two states, for cohabitation and harmony. This definition of the word PRAXYS seems to us to be particularly topical in the light of current crises, both social and environmental.
In addition, the agency develops manufacturing strategies that play with the complexity of reality, attempting to shape the state of the world in the service of new uses. Composing with the living, which is in continuous transformation, means guiding its energy; understanding and taming it means being able to transpose it to the scale of cities and territories. It’s also a game with time, inviting us to wonder where and how to act, to multiply images or abandon them. Accepting that everything is in flux, growing, moving, and mutating, means accepting the idea of change, the evolution of elements and impermanence.
3. Diversity
PRAXYS is an international agency working in France and abroad (Russia, Belgium, Algeria, Benin, Switzerland, Italy…). The breadth and diversity of the subjects we tackle allow for enrichment and ongoing experimentation on all scales, from urban project management to rural assignments. PRAXYS designs landscapes based on journeys, uses, needs, places and memories, seeking to create and invent a diversity of atmospheres and a wealth of moods. It’s an opportunity to create a new imagination, to inhabit a new postcard in the service of a neighbourhood, village, countryside or city. The project then becomes a radical way of changing the appearance of a territory without changing its essence.
Published on July 9, 2022
