Portfolio
ALEXIS MOHAMADI
ARCHITECT
Selection of university projects, professional work and personal explorations.
2023
Alexis Mohamadi
Young architect, trained at ENSACF (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture of Clermont-Ferrand). Creative, enthusiastic, passionate and motivated to engage me in the design and realization of projects with a positive social, cultural, poetic and ecological impact on what makes up our realities.
WORK EXPERIENCE
Practical training traineeship - 8 weeks
Ballast Architectes, Strasbourg, Grand-Est
2022 First practice traineeship - 5 weeks
Outsign Architecture, Paris, Île-de-France
2019 Traineeship in an architectural agency - 8 weeks
Ameller Dubois & Associés, Paris, Île-de-France
2018
Worker traineeship on site - 4 weeks
Jean Lefebvre Île-de-France, Cannes-Écluse, Île-de-France
EDUCATION
2024 Master in architecture - DEA (diplôme d’État d’architecte) with highest honour; Field of study REx (Réalités et Expérience)
ENSA Clermont-Ferrand
2022 Bachelor in architecture - DEEA (diplôme d’études en architecture)
ENSA Clermont-Ferrand
2019 Two-year technical degree in Civil Engineering & Sustainable Construction Civil
IUT Le Havre
2017 French Baccalauréat in science - Major in Mathematics, European Section
Lycée Polyvalent André Malraux, Montereau-Fault-Yonne
STUDENT ENGAGEMENT
2022-24 Member of the group “ Agir pour l’Égalité “ Initiative in favor of equality for all within the ENSACF.
2022-23 Instructor of the “ Égalité des chances “ traineeship - 1 week, by the Culture & Diversité Foundation Action in favor of access to the major higher education establishments of Culture for students from modest backgrounds.
2021-23 Secretary and volunteer seller
La COOP, ENSACF’s student cooperative.
2020-21 Communication officer
Germinarium de Sabourin, ENSACF’s ecological association.
Architect
French nationality
Based in Paris, France
(+33)6 66 47 10 48 alexis-mohamadi@orange.fr
IG : @alexismohamadi
SKILLS
● ● ● ● ○ Adobe Illustrator
● ● ● ● ● Adobe InDesign
● ● ● ○ ○ Adobe Photoshop
● ● ● ○ ○ AutoCAD
● ● ● ● ○ Pack Office
● ● ○ ○ ○ Procreate
● ● ● ○ ○ Revit
● ● ● ● ○ SketchUp Pro
○ ○ ○ ○ Vectorworks
LANGUAGES
French - native language
English - level B1 (CLES)
German - level A2
MISCELLANEOUS
Clean Driving licence
Hand drawing
Photography
Badminton
Guitar
Travel
Literature
Highlighting potentialities of the empty
PROJECT STUDIO - PROJECT GRADUATION
E. DAVID, C. DELMOND, G. LAFOND ET S. FIGUERAS AGUIRRE’S
WORKSHOP.
MASTER 2, SEMESTER 10.
RECONNECT, ORDER, AMPLIFY, FAIRE-VALOIR, GATHER.
“You who build gardens, do not make parks; make margins. Do not make grounds for recreation and games, make places of enjoyment; make closures that are beginnings. Do not make imaginary objects; make fiction. Do not make representations; make empty, gaps; make neutral.“ Louis Marin, Lectures traversières, Paris, Albin Michel, 1992, p. 87
Today, in our cities, we find a relationship with spaces and soils that vary from one neighborhood to another. Sometimes there is little free floor space, sometimes it is available in large quantities. This ground left free can be called an empty. These emptys are not spaces where there is nothing. They are completely essential and generate real uses. These free and generous soils are part of our common goods and are fundamental. It is therefore important to take care of it.
Just as housing is a vital good, empty is an inalienable resource as it contributes to socio-urban balance. Therefore, it is crucial to recognize their value and consider them as key elements of the architectural and urban development of the city. This Project Graduation aims here to address the question of emptiness as a resource for creating a project.
The city is punctuated with teeming pockets - sometimes - with various uses and housing: businesses, homes, industries, or even public facilities. It is structured and is also made up of more inert pockets, left behind, which also deserve and just ask to be revealed. Spaces that should allow for commonality are too often reduced to commercial spaces. In architecture, the simulacrum is such that the policy of the ANRU - Agence Nationale de Rénovation Urbainenow only considers the city through a logic of demolition, and thus refuses to look at the sites as they are. , to see their qualities, their potential, their powers. By imposing itself and dictating a systematic plan, the ANRU breaks with the intelligence of the place. Residentialization, which in fact produces a series of fences, strongly limits the influence of the public domain, and in a certain way sterilizes our soils.
Let us imagine other uses for empty spaces than those of roads, sidewalks or the land reserve for developers. No doubt, the void and the commons in the city are full of potential that we need to explore and amplify here.
PROJECTED GUIDE PLAN | The empty generated around the object-monument makes it possible to envisage new uses.
AXONOMETRY | The swimming pool is located in the heart of Vergnes, a popular, cosmopolitan and rapidly changing district.
ATMOSPHERE | The entrance sequence, a public square - The diving boards, a final letting go.
ATMOSPHERE | Showers, an invitation to introspection - Locker rooms, a solitary but shared space.
ATMOSPHERE | The pools, an open-air experience - The beach, a peaceful atmosphere.
ATMOSPHERE | The inhabited wall, an awakened curiosity - The barista, a comfort after the effort.
Desirable residential tower as an attemtp at altercité
PROJECT STUDIO
G. LAFOND AND D. MARCILLON’S WORKSHOP.
MASTER 2, SEMESTER 9.
Urban posture designed in collaboration with C. Léger.
LIVE, CULTIVATE, SHARE, LIVE, PRODUCE, GETTING TOGETHER.
“To create a new world, we must start from a world that exists. No doubt about it. To discover one, perhaps you have to have lost one. Or be lost yourself.“ Ursula K. Le Guin, Faire des mondes.
Les Vergnes, located north of Clermont-Ferrand, built relatively recently in the early 1970s, is a predominantly residential district. Today, despite the social difficulties and impoverishment concentrated within it, the sector presents significant potential for urban renewal.
The project is an extension of the guide plan drawn up by the ANRU. It fits into the fabric of allotment gardens already present. At the same time, faced with the lack of housing and the increase in housing insecurity, the desirable tower project focuses on the question of “living better”. Also, through its vertical typology, the proposal aims to offer new residences without causing unreasonable and unnecessary urban sprawl. In this, it is part of and offers elements of response to the challenges of tomorrow, in particular in the face of the ZAN law - Zero Net Artificialization - the objective of which is to minimize the impact on the ground of constructed buildings.
In addition, the desirable tower is positioned in one of the four scenarios proposed by the professor of Architectural History and Culture Sébastien Marot, which he calls Infiltration. Thus, the proposal aims to offer as much residential area as cultivable area. By bringing together both housing and gardens in the same area, the desire is to invent a new form of everyday habitability, to take better care of humans and to counter urban sprawl and the artificialization of land.
TERRITORIAL MAP | Develop and promote a landscape of links between the different local actors in the territory.
PERSPECTIVE SECTION AND PLAN | A desirable residential tower designed in a strong relationship with the common space.
ATMOSPHERE | Life punctuated by gardens, generous circulation, living rooms bathed in light, and lively facades.
AXONOMETRY | Minimize its impact on the ground to leave room for allotment gardens.
Experiment hall
PROJECT STUDIO
C. FABRE AND C. MARIEY’S WORKSHOP.
MASTER 1, SEMESTER 7.
Project carried out in collaboration with L. Lavastroux, C. Léger, P. Klein and M. Roux.
EXPERIMENT, SHELTER, WORK, STORE, MEET.
With a budget of €55,700 including VAT, his proposal for an experimental hall works with abobe and farmhouse materials.
On the southern edge of the ENSACF park, this proposal seeks to redefine a garden boundary that is free to use. This hall consists of an earthen wall that encloses the park and gives it a facade capable of becoming a showcase for the experiments in progress at the school. Parallel to the old sanatorium, it resumes its logic of implantation. It develops a forgotten circulation in the park: the southern path linking the Allée des Tilleuls to the two low platforms of the garden.
The hall is made up of two experimental platforms. Punctuated by the blocks of earth, these platforms extend inside the wall thus creating more restricted spaces, to work, store, exhibit, present one’s work... In addition, the roof, a truss structure with a cantilever frees up a large working space.
Regularly mentioned in the school’s pedagogy, the know-how around the abobe material is highlighted here. The four blocks of land are an opportunity for students, teachers and administrative staff to participate in the construction site.
The assemblies and the implementation of this place are thought out over a long period of time, integrated into a logic of reuse. The project therefore hides several, called or not to be revealed.
NORTH ELEVATION.
AXONOMETRIC SECTION DETAIL | Relation to the ground and the sky.
Phase 1, assembled hall.
Phase 2, assembled hall (trusses only).
Phase 3, dismantled hall.
Phase 4, dismantled hall (foundations only).
Scalar projection
THINKING
MATTER
C. FABRE AND C. MARIEY’S WORKSHOP.
MASTER 1, SEMESTER 7.
REFLECTION, EXCURSION AND INCURSION.
A material as common as it is universal, glass has not ceased in recent years to be increasingly highlighted in the architectural writing about buildings. Although we can distinguish regional trends, we seem to be witnessing, without doubt, a fundamental movement that contributes to a certain standardization of architectures on a planetary scale. With the advent of the international style first and then of postmodernism, we seem to be witnessing a kind of triumph of transparency, a kind of explosion of light.
However, a shadow now tends to waver this frenetic deployment. Between fragility and unalterability, aesthetic minimalism and complexity of implementation, openness to the landscape and protection to the outside, glass accumulates paradoxical dualities. In the same way, is there not a hiatus, faced with the new current climatic conditions, and the scarcity of matter? Wouldn’t it be time to deeply redefine and seriously re-examine the relevance of using glass as mass materials? Only the most privileged will they be able to continue to benefit from generous opening while maintaining a wide thermal comfort?
Finally, glass refers us to the choices we make as a society. When do we choose to use glass? For who? Why? How? With what quality?
Dazzling, brilliant, sparkling, dazzling - sometimes -, embodying a certain form of prosperity, even abundance, the glass will no doubt have to make changes if it wishes to continue to fully deliver its values and characteristics to the world, otherwise it risks to become anachronistic.
The big nibble.
The introduction. Get out of the frame.
Active sand quarry, upheaval of landscapes.
Destruction of natural habitat, fragmentation of ecosystems and weakening of biodiversity.
Use of little or badly treated sea sand, leading to poor quality materials and the rapid deterioration of infrastructures.
Atmospheric pollution.
25% of the world’s amount of sand is trapped behind the world’s 845,000 hydraulic dams.
Former sand quarry converted most of the time into a pond, pond or landfill.
Silica sand storage.
Weighing of the raw material.
Mixture of silica with cullet (up to 50% of the mixture).
First firing at 1,550°C where fusion takes place.
Molding and surface treatment.
Second firing at 1100°C.
Excessive extraction and dredging of sand from the seabed contributing to increased turbidity in the water, endangering corals, phytoplankton and marine organisms and destroying the seabed (the benthic zones).
Marine sand treatment and desalination plant.
Drop in groundwater levels.
Intrusion of seawater into groundwater, contaminating them with salt.
Former sand quarry converted into a photovoltaic power station.
Uncontrolled erosion of the coast, increased risk of flooding and marine submersion.
Declining beaches (between 75 and 90% of the world’s beaches are in danger, leading in fact to more and more river sand extraction), leading to less coastal protection against storms and tsunamis.
Stretching, progressive cooling, cutting, control, packaging then delivery of the glass.
Energy networks supplying the furnaces (fuel gas or electricity). Collection of recycled glass (cullet).
Relationship to the near and distant landscape.
Intake of natural light, reducing the heating and lighting of housing. Opening and view to the outside.
Air circulation, ventilation, and natural ventilation of housing (opening your windows at least 5 to 10 minutes a day is essential).
Productive landscape
PROJECT STUDIO
L. BELALA, O. GUYON, L. LEOTOING AND G. LAFOND’S WORKSHOP.
BACHELOR 3, SEMESTER 6.
Project carried out for the “Petites Villes de demain “ program, in collaboration with T. Cuminetti, C. Léger and M. Michellod.
SHAPE, TRANSFORM, WORK, PRODUCE, SCULPT.
“Architecture is a vital penetration in a context which is always plural, mysterious, cultivated and structured. Its creative mission is to make the situation visible, to order the existing, to accentuate and amplify the site. It always consists in a rediscovery of the Genius Loci from which it proceeds.“ Oswald Mathias Ungers and Rheinhard Gieselmann, Zu einer neuen Architecktur, 1960.
For many years, the economy of the Cantal region has developed around snow. But temperatures are rising and white gold is tending to disappear. What are the responses to a destabilized territorial economy?
The department is strongly marked by its diverse heritage profusion. The forests marry the reliefs and the volcanic rock stone draws the facades of Cantal. Why not make it an economic force?
In this approach, the proposal wishes to promote the wood and stone sectors to respond to the territorial economy of tomorrow. The landscape becomes productive. Many trades would then be to be promoted.
The project, like a productive figure, extends to the territorial scale with forest management fruit plantations throughout the AURA region. The proposition aims to develop on the scale of the municipality of Murat city with its artisanal zone of Martinet.
The general idea is thus also to try to curb the urban expansion of the artisanal zone. The latter has indeed been growing since the 2010s, sealing the soil near a flood zone.
Rural territories in project
ARCHITECTURAL ANALYSIS
SUPERVISED BY G. LAFOND.
BACHELOR 3, SEMESTER 6.
Carried out in collaboration with C. Léger.
WERKRAUMHAUS, PETER ZUMTHOR, ANDELSBUCH, AUTRIA, 2013.
This exercise aims to observe, identify, qualify, and understand the role of the different elements that make up an architectural object. The major desire was then to allow a deepening of the methods of analysis of form and space. In the same way that the learning of reading and writing are intimately linked, knowing how to perceive and analyze architectures are essential notions in order to know how to design them.
The Werkraumhaus by Peter Zumthor (Pritzker Prize 2005) served as a support for this exercise. Built in Austria, in the Andelsbuch valley, it is implanted along a road and a cycle path in the center of the village. The building hosts 85 craft businesses as well as exhibitions and public events.
The 1,500 square meter project consists of a long gluedlaminated roof resting on three concrete blocks taking up the lateral forces. These blocks are not load-bearing, however they make the wired structure made up of wooden columns invisible. These solid spruce columns are 14 in number. The triple glazing facades do not take up any load, the columns ensure the maintenance of the building. Finally, the Werkraumhaus is set in a mountainous relief, marked by a cultivated valley, important wooded areas, water reservoirs as well as the Bregenzer Ach, a tributary of the Rhine.
PHOTOGRAPH BY FLORIAN HOLZHERR AND RALPH FEINER.
White noise
PROJECT STUDIO
A. DELZIANI, T. NOUAILLER, ET N. PICAPER’S WORKSHOP.
BACHELOR 3, SEMESTER 5.
Urban posture designed in collaboration with I. Cael, S. Calarco C. Léger and I. Lacombe.
GIVE BODY TO THE INVISIBLE.
“Metropolisation, placed at the center, is approached as much as a subject, as as a resource that can be mobilized in the practice of the project. Not limited to the sole dimension of the building, the design moves, becomes more complex, hybridizes. From territory to matter, it is a question of considering architecture in its wide acceptance: architecture of cities, architecture of buildings, architecture of soils.“ Introduction of the Syllabus.
In response to the challenge and the posture carried by semester 5, we have chosen to direct our work towards a meaning that is often neglected or even forgotten: sound. After surveying and exploring the Cataroux site, our approach focused more particularly on what is called white noise.
It is a noise combining sounds of all frequencies. The only describable characteristic of this noise is a certain uniformity. It is often emitted by rain or running water, for example. In addition, white noise has the effect of attenuating other sounds in the vicinity.
The watershed of the Tiretaine and the place that the river occupies today in the city of Clermont-Ferrand being major issues of the semester, the first intention was then to update not only the water that makes up the river but also and above all the white noise that accompanies it and its benefits. In addition, the shape and composition of the dwellings designed on the site have the particularity of welcoming in certain places or protecting themselves in other places from white noise and sound waves.
ATMOSPHERE MODEL OF THE WHITE NOISE PROJECT | Domestic wealth.
Starters - Pedestal
PROJECT STUDIO
P. MOINARD AND W. SANCHEZ’S WORKSHOP.
BACHELOR 2, SEMESTER 4.
Project carried out for the program of “ Les Sentiers Métropolitains “, inspired by “ l’Habitat Manifeste “ of the House in Leiria designed by Manuel Aires Mateus.
RECONNECTING
URBAN MORPHOLOGIES THROUGH THE PEDESTAL.
“Utopia is the reality of tomorrow. It’s not science fiction, it’s not a world that exists outside of the world we face. It is the task of the urban planner to foresee this reality of tomorrow today.“ Oswald Mathias Ungers, German architect and architectural theorist.
Socle, from the Italian zoccolo (“shoe”) and from the Latin socculus, diminutive of soccus (“sandal”), initially designates the base on which a column rests. It can also be a plain or molded seat, most often quadrangular on which rests a building, a column, or which serves as a support for a statue.
More generally, it nominate a base, supposedly solid, on which rests an object (bust, cross, vase, ...) in the literal sense, or a concept (theory, ...) in the figurative sense.
In architecture, the base-block configuration designates a type of building composed of two volumes: an element which surmounts a wider and lower base. The architect Joseph Abram defines it as “a platform surmounted by a stud or a plate, even a tower or a bar“.
The functional interest of this “dual typology“ is the possibility of dividing the spaces between the base, whose flexibility makes it possible to accommodate exceptional spaces in size or destination, and the block, which offers a seriality, i.e. repetitive spaces.
According to : CNRTL / Un monument historique controversé from Giulia Marino / AMC Le Moniteur architecture, 09.2000.
COLLAGE | Under the pedestal.
COLLAGE | On the pedestal.
The tree and the seat WORKSHOP
M.H GAY-CHARPIN’S WORKSHOP.
BACHELOR 3, SEMESTER 6.
Project carried out in collaboration with A. Aslanian, Z. Aggad and C. Léger.
CONTINUUM DESIGN/MANUFACTURING.
The objective of the “tree and the seat“ was to practice experimentation on a scale of 1 thanks to a concrete relationship to matter and uses. In a way, it was a question of coming to create a sculpture of use.
It was then a part of implementing materials according to the “rules of the art“ and the other part of making a “work“ by responding to an order.
The seat is organized around a landmark, protective tree. Thus, without this “totem” tree, the seat would tip over. This fragile balance makes it possible to inhabit the tree but above all to highlight the delicate stability between nature and culture.
The object produced revolves around an iterative process between use, ergonomics, poetry, concept, know-how and implementation. The upper seat, which maintains the legs in a high position, is inspired in particular by the work of the architect and designer Charlotte Perriand. Finally, our production then completes the original tree.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE TREE AND THE SEAT.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE TREE AND THE SEAT.
PHOTOGRAPH OF THE TREE AND THE SEAT.
Adapt for better living
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
OUTSIGN ARCHITECTURE AGENCY.
FIRST PRACTICE TRAINEESHIP, FEBRUARY 2022.
HOUSE HAMLET OF KERIVAUD 56 LOCMARIAQUER.
Here, the major challenge was to adapt part of the house to PMR use by meeting specific standards. However, it was also a question of limiting as much as possible the impact of this adaptation by preserving the design and the original intention of the house, which make it rich. Indeed, as presented opposite on the first axonometry, the architecture of the project was originally designed in two distinct parts separated by a remarkable wall: with the day area on one side and the garage on the other. As drawn on the second axonometry, unfortunately, in the proposed proposal and after several attempts and reflections, this logic could only be partly retained. Thus, only the day / garage separation persists, the remarkable wall partly disappearing in favor of the creation of the PRM part.
Diverse hypotheses have been tested, sometimes focusing more on practical use, sometimes more on architectural form. It is obvious that here it is rather the practical use that prevailed. However, it still seems to me that a good compromise has been put in place and that one does not take precedence over the other.
Finally, this project has made it possible to highlight the issues related to access to all basic daily living spaces as well as those related to the various standards relating to PMR issues - essential but increasingly demanding and which can sometimes enter into in conflict with creativity and architectural readability - . This work has also, in a way, highlighted the importance of thinking from the start of the design of flexible and resilient housing, able of adapting to its inhabitants.
AND GROUND FLOOR PLANS | Existing/project.
The belly of the earth
SENSIBILIS(ACTIONS)
S. THUILIER’S WORKSHOP
MASTER 1, SEMESTER 7.
Project carried out in collaboration with the Elementary School of Charles Perrault of Clermont-Ferrand.
EXPERIMENTING THE UNKNOWN TO OVERCOME YOUR FEARS.
“After a certain threshold of mystery and dread, the dreamer enters the cave and feels that he could live there.“ Gaston Bache-lard, excerpt from La terre et les rêveries du Repos
After two years spent between lockdown, curfews, or even restrictive measures, the Belly of the Earth project proposes to extract oneself for a week from a sometimes frenetic daily life. This program is part of a desire to raise awareness among children aged around ten, from a primary school, to the architectural universe through the theme of elsewhere.
In an era of all screens and where in situ excursions are becoming rarer, it seems important to re-introduce a concrete relationship with the local territory. The chosen site, the Font-deGaume cave, has potential elsewhere - among many others! - for children from Charles Perrault Elementary School. The intention was therefore to survey the cavities, to observe the parietal paintings, to perceive the places. The objective was also to apprehend a different environment, a primitive habitat, to appropriate a certain elsewhere.
Afterwards, as a first introduction to architecture, the students were offered to carry out several workshops related to shadow, light, reflection, color or even sound, elements that are an integral part of the work of the architect. To support the students in their creations, an architectural reference panel was exhibited to them during the week.
Finally, their work gave rise to a performance in the troglodyte caves of Perrier then to an exhibition implemented in the form of photographic rendering.
AWARENESS WORKSHOP, PERRIER TROGLODYTE CAVE | Photographs by
Amaya Delgado.
Photography collection
EXPERIMENTATION
ALEXIS MOHAMADI
OBSERVE, FRAME, CAPTURE.
“Looking at the world, photographing the world and looking at photographs of the world are three distinct actions and we must not forget that a photograph is always the framing of a larger whole, operating by subtraction and by puncture in reality.“ Jean-Charles Vergnes, excerpt from Demeurer absent
Architecture offers its visitor - like photography offers its viewer - a space, a time, a unique moment that the gaze and the body appropriate, explore.
Going beyond simple observation and exploring a surface, a space, an atmosphere, an atmosphere by listening to our senses, our sensations, our sensitivity is a process that is daily but often unconscious to us.
Also, the work of photography is part of the documentation, archiving and communication of the aesthetic, formal or even structural characteristics of buildings and architectural structures.
Finally, the practice of architecture just like the practice of photography allows us to better consider space, to experience it more, to live it.
PERSONAL PHOTOGRAPHS | Prehistory interpretation centre, Les Eyzies.
