Creating, traveling, drawing, and building: such is the DNA of the exuberant architect and designer Marcelo Joulia. Driven from his home country of Argentina by the 1976 military coup, this personal trauma gave him the strength to be a great builder. For thirty years, his agency Naço —‘intuition’ in the Guarani language—has been the laboratory of a global and inventive architecture, aiming to decompartmentalise genres and trades, and mixing knowledge, arts, and professional backgrounds together. Belonging to no specific school, and fiercely attached to his independence and freedom, he has imagined a unique creative space in which expertise and rigour both flourish within the domains of luxury, urban mobility, and major architecture. As an insatiable adventurer, he is able to take an interest in anything —large-scale buildings, design, furniture, bicycles, boats— while not denying himself anything. His passion revolves around teamwork and bringing talents together to conceive of new worlds. As an epicurean, a generous person passionate about art and gastronomy, Marcelo Joulia creates places in his image: unique, welcoming, and always dynamic.

This book showcases the vision of a man and an agency that has surrounded itself with the best and strived to bring to life a demanding and iconoclastic architecture, and carry it forth into the future.

Stud compiles photographs that Aurélie Jacquet and Aurélien Mole shot while they were students at the French National School of Photography, respectively between 2012-2015 and 2000-2003. The images they chose from one another’s archives are staged by Syndicat. Alan Eglinton, a former student from the same school, conducts an interview with Nick Waplington. It sheds light on the notion of the retrospective gaze, which this book might be about. Unless the pictures we’re dealing with here are the kind one takes when learning photography? The publication is composed of 11 booklets of 16 pages. 10 of these booklets are chosen and assembled randomly, making each of the 300 copies unique.

Authors: Aurélien Mole, Aurélie Jacquet, Alan Eglinton, Nick Wapplington, Syndicat