TANK is an architectural practice established by Olivier Camus and Lydéric Veauvy in 2015. Marked by a strong friendship that formed while students at the University of Saint-Luc de Tournai, the duo has since elaborated central concerns for architectural thinking and concepts spanning diverse scales and programmes dedicated to more humane and ecologically responsible environments. Embracing sensible, poetic and spatial qualities of architecture, TANK addresses the necessity to create projects in which form, function, and materiality establish a certain coherence and a meaningful, symbolic bond.
Through sketches, drawings, and model making, hands-on processes and artisanal know-how are at the heart of their creative process. Enhanced by contemporary techniques and 3D computer graphics, their works reflect a sensibility for intelligent and informed design, and aim to create a poetic response to the landscapes they inhabit.
TANK has received numerous awards and honours, such as NASA in 2006, the Europe 40 Under 40 Award from the European Center for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies, and the Chicago Athenaeum in 2011, and has been nominated for the Prix d'architecture de l’Equerre d’argent in 2009, 2010 and 2016. Most recently, the office received the Trophées Eiffel 2020, Archinovo and the German Design Award 2020 for the House Mouvaux in Lille. The firm's monograph, TANK, a compilation of essays, research, and projects covering a decade of the office’s work, was published in 2017.
Through sketches, drawings, and model making, hands-on processes and artisanal know-how are at the heart of their creative process. Enhanced by contemporary techniques and 3D computer graphics, their works reflect a sensibility for intelligent and informed design, and aim to create a poetic response to the landscapes they inhabit.
TANK has received numerous awards and honours, such as NASA in 2006, the Europe 40 Under 40 Award from the European Center for Architecture, Art, Design and Urban Studies, and the Chicago Athenaeum in 2011, and has been nominated for the Prix d'architecture de l’Equerre d’argent in 2009, 2010 and 2016. Most recently, the office received the Trophées Eiffel 2020, Archinovo and the German Design Award 2020 for the House Mouvaux in Lille. The firm's monograph, TANK, a compilation of essays, research, and projects covering a decade of the office’s work, was published in 2017.
Context
‘A rampart against the risk of repetition, the question of context is vital for TANK. Their buildings are at one with the locations from which they arise even though they stand out from them. They seek neither to mimic nor to dissimulate; instead they seek inventive complicity. For TANK, sites, contexts and environments fertilise architectural intention and are fertilised by it in turn. In “Le territoire comme palimpseste”, André Corboz, the inventor of the concept of the hyper-city, explains that “a place is not a given, but the result of condensation. In areas where Man has lived for thousands of years, every bump in the ground becomes meaningful. Understanding them means giving ourselves the opportunity to intervene more intelligently”. We have to work with a number of different forces: the brief, the client, what the client wants, the budget, the site, the built or natural context, standards and regulations… The world, society, and reality speak to the architects via the local situations that they investigate. ’ Sophie Trelcat, TANK, 2016.
‘A rampart against the risk of repetition, the question of context is vital for TANK. Their buildings are at one with the locations from which they arise even though they stand out from them. They seek neither to mimic nor to dissimulate; instead they seek inventive complicity. For TANK, sites, contexts and environments fertilise architectural intention and are fertilised by it in turn. In “Le territoire comme palimpseste”, André Corboz, the inventor of the concept of the hyper-city, explains that “a place is not a given, but the result of condensation. In areas where Man has lived for thousands of years, every bump in the ground becomes meaningful. Understanding them means giving ourselves the opportunity to intervene more intelligently”. We have to work with a number of different forces: the brief, the client, what the client wants, the budget, the site, the built or natural context, standards and regulations… The world, society, and reality speak to the architects via the local situations that they investigate. ’ Sophie Trelcat, TANK, 2016.
Habitation
Central to TANK's practice is the subject of “habitation”, comfort, and well-being, which instigated in a specific research project in 2020 on the question: "What determines the qualities of the dwelling for the user?” An ongoing study examines particularities of the occupation of space, and spatial responses to both current conditions and future possibilities addressing the realm of “habitation”, [spaces of] home and belonging, and their symbolic and material expression.
Central to TANK's practice is the subject of “habitation”, comfort, and well-being, which instigated in a specific research project in 2020 on the question: "What determines the qualities of the dwelling for the user?” An ongoing study examines particularities of the occupation of space, and spatial responses to both current conditions and future possibilities addressing the realm of “habitation”, [spaces of] home and belonging, and their symbolic and material expression.
The art of building
