Emilie Appercé
Emilie, please introduce yourself:
I’m Emilie Appercé–an architect based in Paris and Zurich. I write, teach, and design projects always collaboratively in different fields of creation, such as architecture, design, publication, and exhibition. I’m a co-editor of womenwritingarchitecture.org and co-founder of Zurich International. My practice develops as a non-linear construction through direct engagement, attention to context, and careful interpretation, with space for unexpected shifts and interventions within each project.
#1 You’re part of the Women Writing Architecture (WWA) initiative—could you describe your role within the platform and how you see its relevance for the architectural discourse today?
I support Helen Thomas in developing our publishing house wwa (publishing) —a series of chapbooks that will be available via print-on-demand. I also work on publishing the two podcast series, A Book I Love and The Author Speaks, that extend the platform’s reach. WWA operates internationally. Architects, diverse practitioners, and readers worldwide reach us, or we reach them. These connections generate new conversations, collaborations, and projects—such as Tish Zwei Verein, our physical platform in the Swiss Alps.WWA challenges the foundations of architectural discourse by celebrating women’s writing—not as a claim to authority, but as a means to surface alternative perspectives. It questions the canon, tries to foreground marginal voices, and reframes what counts as architectural knowledge, expanding the field through critical, often personal, paths of investigation.
© womenwritingarchitecture.org
#2 Together with Leo Bettini, you’re currently working on the renovation of two spaces for Swiss artists. What are the specific architectural or conceptual challenges in adapting these spaces into both living and semi-public cultural environments?
We are completing two renovations to create studio-living spaces, one in Basel (CH) and one in Bidart (FR). The spaces reflect the inseparable nature of an artist’s life and work. Our approach navigates complexity and ambiguity, rather than separating work and life or public and private. The layouts adapt fluidly—expanding or contracting to support living, working, exhibitions, residencies, or renting.
A project begins with people, and the rhetoric of its architecture reflects the collaborative process—including clients, money, builders, and existing materials. Renovation demands embracing great uncertainty: you never fully know a site until you start digging, which we use strategically. Artists bring strong methods to project development, which shifts the architect’s focus from control or fetishism toward a shared vision.
Zurich International, transformation and adaptive reuse, Zürich, CH, 2023, © Tibor Bielicky
#3 In your project for vegetarian restaurants in Zürich, you explored new ideas for university canteens and involved students through a summer school at ETH. How did this collaborative setup influence the development of the project, and what stands out to you about working with a participatory approach compared to more conventional design processes?
I’m sceptical of competitions—they create strange energy: ego trips when you win, and mostly you just feel lousy when you lose. That energy could be better spent collaborating. I much prefer works engaging the various actors who shape a project from the outset.
The university canteen was a real commission, which we developed, including a summer school with a diverse team—students as first concerned by the topic, experts, the client (a pioneer in plant-based food), and food industry professionals. We engaged directly with suppliers to understand the system. Canteens are underused despite their social role. We aimed to activate them as pastures or civic spaces—like train stations—intensifying their use beyond eating or being just places to consume. This format gave students a real stake and rooted the project in lived experience, making the process more relevant and productive.
#4 Exhibition-making is another facet of your practice. What drew you into curating and organizing exhibitions, and how does this work allow you to explore or communicate architecture differently than through building?
Exhibitions are places to think with space, to construct relationships between works, people, and histories, and to practice architecture outside the realm of building. Exhibitions are a quicker process and can be more speculative. More satisfying. They offer another kind of agency, working with contradictions and hybrid forms within a visual culture. I also love meeting and connecting with people. I see exhibitions not as a detour from architecture, but as part of its expanded field.
#5 You move fluently between practice, publishing, curating, and teaching. In what ways do these activities inform and influence one another within your overall approach to architecture?
They are all connected, but also acknowledge productive discrepancies. Writing forces you to articulate thoughts that may have only been instincts when you build, things which you cannot build or go beyond the project. They might be more critically articulated thoughts. Publishing and editing are not separate from design, but another medium to work through architecture. It’s about assembling things—texts, images, references— and see what they mean together. Like architecture, it’s about composition, context, and attention. Exhibition tests architectural ideas without the burden of permanence or program. And practice keeps you grounded to realities. Teaching is about continuous learning.
Exhibition Fire Pit Celebration, together with Liaohui Guo, Yangshuo Sugar House, CN, 2023
#6 Given the diversity of your work, what would you say is the most challenging aspect of maintaining such a multifaceted practice—and what keeps you grounded or oriented across these different scales and formats?
My work is about building something steady—rooted in continuity, memory, and persistence. I take on different roles because I value ideas formed through complexity and overlap. Time is short, so you get strategic, less fetishising, and focus on what matters. I’m not saying it’s successful. It’s a constant grind.
POLPO, Trio design, 2021. Stool produced for Milano Design Week 2021, Dominik Meier © Kairos Studio GmbH_034
#7 How do you see the role of an architect in today's society?
I see the role of the architect not as a service provider, but as a cultural figure—someone contributing to the built environment in dialogue with history, craft, and public life.
#8 How does your environment influence your work?
The architect’s role is to read the environment and react to what’s there by finding something that can support it, intensify it, or shift it. A bit like an Editor. Assembling fragments, adjusting proportions, setting up relationships—not inventing from nothing. It’s materially sustainable, as well as socially sustainable.
#9 Three things that inspire you at the moment?
Interior design books from the ’80s and ’90s, like Studio Eighty Interior Design by Mitsuhashi Uchida or The Best of American Houses by Riera Ojeda, or old sales catalogues for designer furniture.
The last talk organised by Women Writing Architecture about Success.
Just returned from the Atacama Desert in Chile — at the Tatio geysers, it feels like a silent rock concert at 6 a.m. The sun cuts through clouds of steam where cold air meets hot water heated by lava beneath the earth. It’s brutal and theatrical. Like nature performing itself, loud.
#10 What do you currently read, watch, listen to?
I’ve been reading Ice by Anna Kavan, which will be our next podcast. The book shows power as unstable, tangled with desire—where intimacy, fear, and control collide. Pervert or Detective? by Reba Maybury and Lucy McKenzie also echoes this: power is never clean or abstract, always messy and unresolved. I’m interested in how sexuality, care, and daily life intertwine with each other without clear boundaries. The films La Vénus à la fourrure or Demonlover linger in that same ambiguous territory—where seduction and domination fold into each other, and you’re never quite sure who’s in control.
Links
website: emilieapperce.com
Instagram: @emilieapp
Photo Credits: © Emilie Appercé, © womenwritingarchitecture.org, © Tibor Bielicky, © Kairos Studio GmbH_034
Interview by Caroline Steffen