La Villette Pro

Launched in 2022, the La Villette Pro project aims to support the professionalization of future graduates and young professionals. It is designed both for those intending to work as designers and project managers in architecture agencies, the traditional core business, and for those intending to work in other fields: consultancy, urban studies and policies, worksites, participative approaches, project management… in associations, local authorities, design offices or individual companies. All observers of the architectural profession point to significant changes in this field over the last twenty years, leading architecture schools to adapt their curricula to the needs of the field.

In this context of renewed activity, a better understanding of existing practices and student support adapted to the new realities are essential. In 2021, an Observatoire de l’économie de l’architecture (Ministry of Culture) was created to better understand the overall economic structure of this professional world. In 2023, a vast diagnostic study entitled “Compétences et métiers d’avenir, France 2030” (Skills and professions of the future, France 2030), coordinated by ENSAPLV, revealed the training needs of an architectural sector considered in its entirety. These recent initiatives show that these new practices represent a major challenge for the French architectural community.

La Villette Pro is part of this program to update the way we look at the architectural professions and the training paths leading to them. From the outset, the project has been conceived as a circle of exchanges, supported by four key actions: 

• Alumni network: fostering exchanges between former, new and future ENSAPLV students;
• Research: to understand and promote the diversity of the architectural professions;
• Encounters: fostering exchanges between students and architecture professionals;
• Banc d’essai(s) incubator: helping graduates to create and develop their own businesses.

These four actions are inextricably linked. They aim to facilitate the transition of graduates from school to the professional world, whatever their chosen career path.