I am a creative civil engineer and passionate urbanist trained in both France and Sweden. I now work in France as a project manager in collaborative city-making and environmental strategy at Wigwam consulting. At Wigwam, we believe that the climate emergency and the bleak future ahead require a change of strategy and pace. We help the actors of the city / rural areas to speed up the transition of both their places and organization towards being more human-centered and 'future-proof'. We work with cities, real estate groups, social housing companies, private companies? and on different project scales.
Which additional experience/skills can people of Placemaking Europe reach out personally to you for?
Throughout my education I became very passionate about everything related to the human behavior in the urban environment. I believe that this field, which remains hardly explored, can be the key to many of the challenges we face. One of the recurring problems faced by placemakers is the lack of engagement and action of people in general, for example towards a public space project but also more generally towards the environment. In the last few years I have researched the psychological barriers that cause this behavior and I am excited to share my thoughts on this matter.
Which experience/skills can people of Placemaking Europe reach out to your organisation for?
Wigwam was founded more than 10 years ago by Canadian (Qubec) architect and urbanist Marika Frenette. Our team is composed of engineers, architects, urbanists, psychosociologists, coach in organizations? this diversity has helped us throughout the years develop a transversal and holistic approach to city-making. Wigwam's strength more specifically lies in unfolding complex urban issues by involving many different stakeholders. We are real 'polyglots', understanding the language and concerns of both experts and non experts of the city, and working on identifying their core needs which are often unknown at first.
Describe one of the projects you are most proud of
I especially enjoyed helping the city of Angers, France reclaim the river banks with 40 local associations, whose priorities and concerns are totally different. Our role was to juggle between different interests in a complex political context. Throughout the project the associations not only have created a common vision and concrete proposals for improving the river, but they are also now putting some into action and structuring a coalition for co-managing the river. To me it was fascinating to help reinvent the way we include associations around urban projects but also to make city representatives and other experts adapt their posture and practice along the way.
