Once associated with Finn Geipel in LABFAC, Nicolas Michelin, along with two partners, founded the ANMA agency at the beginning of the 21st century. He embedded his projects with a focus on sustainable development even before the Grenelle Environment Forum. The urgency of the situation led him to become a fervent advocate for a different way of designing architecture, reimagining the city, and proving through his achievements and urban projects that it is possible.
In 2002, in Grenoble, he built a gymnasium that is a model of lightness and material economy. On the island of Nantes, his housing complex gently merges into a former industrial setting and offers all its inhabitants generous views of the Loire. The new neighborhoods he designs for Dunkerque, Lille, Metz, Saint-Denis near Paris, Mulhouse, and other cities demonstrate that a sustainable city can only be the result of a chain of innovations, from building to urban planning, to landscape: this requires inventiveness from the architect, sometimes boldness, but always persistence.
