Villeneuvoise Gwenola de Quelen, between Paris and Aveyron, and a little in Italy

Villeneuvoise Gwenola de Quelen is based in Paris where she set up the architectural agency Archiloci, with her husband Sergio Noero

“When people don’t know me, they think I’m Breton!” It is true that her first name – Gwenola – and her last name – de Quelen – smack of Armorica. However, the fifty-year-old, born in Villefranche-de-Rouergue in 1970, affirms: “I am really from Aveyron!”

She owes her surname to her father René, who came to settle in Aveyron in 1948, well before the birth of his daughter, although he chose to give her a very Breton first name.

And so it was in Villeneuve then in Capdenac that the young girl went to school before the college of Treize-Pierres then the Sup, in Villefranche-de-Rouergue, where she obtained a bac D. She continued at the university architecture of Toulouse and completed her studies in Paris, where she graduated (DPLG), in 1994. La Villeneuvoise then spent a year in Florence, Italy, where she met Sergio Noero, her future husband.

Back in France, she collaborated with the Parisian architectural firm Bizouard et Pin before setting up on her own in 2000. “My first project, as an independent, was to work on the house that a cousin had just bought it, in Saint-Cloud.”

When her husband left for Rome, to collaborate with the famous architect Jean Nouvel, she joined him in Italy and participated, in particular, in the creation of the Brembo building in Bergamo.

“It was super interesting to work with Jean Nouvel. We touch on a little bit of everything.”

This great experience ended after six months and she then returned to the Bizouard et Pin firm but very quickly, she opened her own agency, with her husband, called Archiloci – “architecture of the link” – and located in the Montmartre district. .

Achievements in the Paris region and Aveyron

“I create extensions or elevations in apartments or houses but very few new houses because there is not too much land available in Paris for construction,” explains the architect. “I also create projects in Aveyron, around Villeneuve, especially rehabilitation of old farmhouses.”

Married since 1999, Gwenola and Sergio have a daughter, Magda, nine years old, who “claims her dual origin, Aveyron and Italian”, underlines her mother. Aveyron where the young girl meets her many cousins, for the holidays and especially for the summer holidays, for two weeks, in August, where it is not uncommon for the Villeneuve house to welcome around forty people, all the family gathered around the grandmother, Jacqueline, ninety-six years old, “helped on a daily basis by the ADMR,” underlines Gwenola de Quelen. “Just great people!”

This Aveyron who seduced her father, he who “found that the people of Aveyron were very welcoming, open and endearing. He was very integrated”, remembers his daughter.

“My husband also likes the human side of the people here. He is almost more Aveyron than me,” smiles the Villeneuvoise woman. “He always wants us to spend the holidays in Aveyron…”

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