Odile Decq set up her own office just after graduating at l’Ecole de la Villette in 1978 and while studying at Sciences Politiques Paris where she completed a post-graduate diploma in Town Planning in 1979.

International renown came as early as 1990, with her first major commission, the Banque Populaire de l’Ouest in Rennes. The numerous prizes and publications that distinguished the building underlined the emergence of a new hope directly born from the punk rebellion which turned old conventions upside down. From then on, ‘Odile Decq Benoît Cornette’ was considered a tool for the future, and the projects as desire generators.

By questioning the commission, the use, the matter, the body, the technique, the taste, their architecture offers a paradoxical look, both tender and severe on today’s world – the A14 viaduct in Nanterre, the buildings for the Economic Sciences University Department and the University of Law Library in Nantes. They were awarded with a Golden Lion in Venice in 1996.

Alone since 1998, Odile Decq has been faithful to her fighting attitude while diversifying and radicalizing her research. Each project is meant to be a jubilatory explosion for the senses and can be seen in buildings such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome. Other projects, the L Museum in Austria, the FRAC de Bretagne in Rennes, the apartment building in Florence ironically dance with the camouflaging habits of daily architecture and suggest smiling at the city or the environment.

Rather than working alone with her collaborators on dream projects to be achieved by squads of engineers, she prefers integrating the dialogue with technicians into the creation process as early as possible. With her demanding sense of detail, she likes to confront herself with their invaluable knowledge and to understand the production mechanisms.

Odile Decq has been elected General Director of the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris. Since then, she shares her time between organizing the school to international standards and new projects in Morocco such as the Sea Passengers Terminal in Tangier, an Art Hotel in China, and the development of parts of a new town in Algiers.