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Lou Elena Bouey

Profession
BA Architecture Alum
College
Central Saint Martins
Person Type
Alumni
Lou Elena Bouey

Biography

Lou Elena is an urbanist and architect in training, originally from Paris, France. She has been living in the UK for a little over 7 years. She studied BA (Hons) Architecture at Central Saint Martins (CSM).

Interview

Please can you tell me a little bit about yourself? 

My name is Lou Elena, and I’m an urbanist and architect in training. I’m originally from Paris, France, and have been living in the UK for a little over 7 years. My work spans across the worlds of construction, policy-making, design and research. A lot of the projects I work on are particularly focused on spatial rehabilitation/repair, participatory practices, migration, and climate resilience.

Why did you choose to study BA (Hons) Architecture at Central Saint Martins (CSM)?

I remember thinking: if my brain is a sponge and the lenses I’ll use to interact with the world and my discipline will be shaped by the institution I go to for the next 3 years, then what kind of things do I want to absorb?

CSM’s architecture programme had an amazingly clear manifesto, and a social and ecological focus that very few other architecture schools in the UK at the time had – I felt really called to be trained with these key focuses in mind. And because I’d be trained in France to be analytical and evidence-based more than to be creative and intuitive, I felt like I’d be out of my depth at CSM and do the most learning/unlearning there – so I went!

What have you been working on since graduating? 

After graduating from CSM in 2019, I worked in an architecture and urban design practice for a year, mostly regeneration projects for different boroughs and designing carbon sequestering buildings. I was spending the rest of my time teaching at CSM, on the Insights programme. I then did my masters and Part 2 at Cambridge on a small course called MPhil Architecture and Urban Design, which enabled me to really grow expertise in my areas of interest and begin to launch design and research projects. I kept teaching at CSM, across Insights and the BA(Hons) Architecture. Since graduating in 2022, I split my time working at Publica’s Community Interest Company and their design team as an urban designer, and working through my own practice on agrarian transition projects in Central America and the Mediterranean.

What was the most interesting project you worked on during your time on the course? 

I think the project that deeply shifted something in me was in my second year of BA. The studio I’d chosen to join was focusing on the city of Palermo, in Sicily. We had carte blanche for what exactly we chose to explore there, though there was a definitive focus for all on social integration and ground-up architectural projects. We travelled to Palermo as a small studio group and walked through the city for days, meeting local stakeholders, talking to artisans, to non-profit groups, to architects... A lot of my architectural work was beginning to focus on migratory patterns and the role spaces and architects had to play in this, so I was deeply immersed in a location that at the time felt like the frontline of many of the issues I was looking at.

We worked on this project for about 6 months, and we’d regularly go back to Palermo to find materials, do research, site surveys… I developed this architectural repair scheme where elder artisans in Palermo who’d been internally displaced in the city due to war damage, corruption and rising living and rent costs were collaborating with unaccompanied migrant minors to rehabilitate derelict structures in the city centre and turn them into housing and practical training centres for displaced communities. It ended up being pitched to the local city council, who chose the site as one of their new developments.

I just remember being 20 in this incredibly architecturally and historically rich city and feeling like everything finally had clicked – that I’d finally been able to grasp what I dreamed architecture was (something at the intersection of disciplines, something that was alive and complicated, that was informal and messy and full of layers, made by many hands). I think this work in Palermo confirmed that there was a place for the kind of architecture that I dreamed of doing – and it probably is what gave me the faith to shift my entire career on that very thing.

What important piece of advice would you give to students thinking of studying this course?

Come in with intentionality – even if that intention is just to be learning as much as you can.

Let yourself be surprised, keep your mind open, and remember that you will get out of it as much as you put in. It’s a marathon, not a sprint…

What was the highlight of your Central Saint Martins experience?

Overall? Probably the way CSM felt like a chosen home. I felt encouraged, seen and heard, and pushed to discover where my limits were. I met my closest friends and future collaborators there, and felt like I was riding an extreme adrenaline rush for the entire time I was doing my degree. I was so inspired to be spending every day in a place where I was surrounded by students who all seemed like the most talented, creative and radical people I’d ever met.

What is the most important thing you learnt on the course?

I think the course taught me the ways in which architecture is a constellation of disciplines that never stop to connect and clash – which means that you are required to be flexible and agile in the way you think and create. This is a skill that’s incredibly valuable to have across all areas of life, and brings an immense sense of freedom! At the same time, it completely revealed how inter-dependent we are as designers with other professionals, and how much we have to learn from them. So practicing architecture to me really is… practicing being a better listener, and a better designer, because of who you’re building for and who you’re building with.

Links

Check Lou’s LinkedIn
Explore Lou’s Website
View the BA (Hons) Architecture course page

Central Saint Martins

Contact

Telephone

+44 (0)20 7514 7444

Address

1 Granary Square
King's Cross
London
N1C 4AA