Vivien Gimenez, a distinguished French architect and interior designer born in Béziers in 1986, founded Vivien Gimenez Architecture (VGA) in 2016 in the heart of Occitanie. Recipient of the prestigious Europe 40under40 award and Future House Award, he blends expertise from École Boulle and École d’Architecture de la Ville & des Territoires Paris-Est with experience at firms like Brenac & Gonzalez & Associés. VGA reinvents diverse programs through eco-responsible, multidisciplinary designs using 3D-BIM tools for immersive innovation. Guided by “Pragméthique”—pragmatism fused with ethics—Gimenez crafts timeless volumes harmonizing light, materials, and context via intuitive narratives and team collaboration.

GDN: What are the guiding principles behind your architectural projects?

Vivien Gimenez: My work is guided by a simple idea: architecture must be accurate. Accurate, in its relationship to climate, to place, and to everyday use. This accuracy relies on several principles.

First, constructive coherence. I see the built volume as the founding act of the project: its form, orientation, and relationship to ground and sky determine everything that follows. This coherence is supported by rigorous tools — 3D, BIM, simulations, virtual reality — which help us anticipate, refine, and make each decision understandable at every stage. Then comes light, the true raw material of the project. It structures space, reveals volumes, and creates a calm Mediterranean atmosphere. After that, material: a search for authenticity, minerality, and textures able to interact with time, heat, and daily life.

Finally, what I call pragmÉthism: a balance between technical efficiency, formal sobriety, environmental responsibility, and constructive ethics. It is a way of intervening with precision, relevance, and respect, in continuous dialogue with the client and future users. Together, these principles lead to a silent, durable, inhabited architecture — one that does not seek gesture for its own sake, but accuracy.

GDN: How do you reconcile environmental awareness with your clients’ needs?

Vivien Gimenez: For me, environmental consciousness is not a parallel goal; it is the starting point of the project. In a Mediterranean context, sustainability begins with how we capture light, create shade, and allow air to flow.

Understanding the site and its history, orienting and protecting it; simplifying systems; choosing durable and local materials and craftsmanship; integrating natural ventilation — all of this forms the foundation of the project, before aesthetics even enter the process.

This is where pragmÉthism becomes essential: reconciling climatic challenges, technical constraints, local resources, and client expectations. Digital tools — BIM, thermal simulations, immersive models — allow us to integrate these parameters from the very beginning, make objective decisions, and show that sustainability can mean comfort, quality, and long-term performance, without increasing construction costs and while optimizing future operational budgets.

The aim is never to oppose individual needs and environmental responsibility, but to demonstrate that a just architecture naturally addresses both.

In this sense, I like to see the studio as a discreet laboratory for the future: Mediterranean conditions — intense light, heat, limited resources — offer a demanding testing ground to invent more sober, comfortable and desirable ways of living. What we develop here, through precise volumes, light devices and durable materials, is meant to inform other contexts, other climates, other scales.

GDN: How does the Europe 40 Under 40 award influence your future projects?

Vivien Gimenez: Receiving the Europe 40 Under 40 award has mainly reinforced a deep conviction: contemporary Mediterranean architecture — when precise, contextual, and quiet — can carry a universal message, one of sensitive adaptation to emerging environmental and societal challenges.

This award did not change my trajectory; it amplified its visibility.

It confirms that one can advocate for an architecture that is:

• rooted in a territory,
• attentive to light and climate,
• sober and durable,
• rigorous in its construction,
• ethically engaged.

It encourages the studio to pursue this architectural narrative, to refine our processes, and to explore new contexts while remaining faithful to our approach: an architecture that is demanding, measured, and deeply situated. It also opens conversations with other European architects committed to more sensitive, coherent, and sustainable responses.

GDN: What legacy do you hope your generation will leave?

Vivien Gimenez: I hope our generation will leave behind an architecture that repairs rather than consumes, that listens before it imposes, that works with what is already there instead of producing abstract images. An architecture that restores value to context, vernacular heritage, climate, material, and long-term thinking. An architecture that embraces sobriety as a form of elegance, precision as a form of generosity, and durability as a form of responsibility.

If our generation manages to pass on:

• constructive rigor,
• sensitivity to light and context,
• respect for materials and resources,
• a humble and committed way of practicing architecture,

then we will have left something useful, adaptable, and enduring. A legacy that is not a style, but an attitude: build less, build better, build with purpose.