We are asked the question both ways: “am I allowed to do without one?” and “do I really need one?”. These are not the same question, and they do not have the same answer.
What the law requires, and where the obligation stops
In France, recourse to an architect is compulsory to draw up the architectural project that is the subject of a planning permission application. An exception exists for natural persons building or altering, for themselves, a construction for non-agricultural use, below a floor-area threshold set by decree — a threshold today established at one hundred and fifty square metres. Above it, or as soon as the works take the built whole past that threshold, an architect is required. The point often missed: the threshold is assessed on the total after works, not on the area created.
Two clarifications that often change the answer. The first: the obligation attaches to the planning permission, not to the works themselves — a heavy interior renovation may require none. The second: in Monaco, the reasoning does not apply at all. There, the application for authorisation to build or demolish must be signed by an architect registered with the Order of Architects of the Principality of Monaco, and no threshold exempts anyone from it.
When an architect really changes something
Legal obligation is one thing; usefulness is another, and the two do not coincide. An architect brings what no contractor can bring in his place: a decision about the whole, taken before the trades begin each deciding for themselves. The cases where this shows are fairly constant — when the volumes change, when light is the subject, when a brief must fit inside a protected envelope, when several intentions contradict one another and someone must settle it.
This is particularly true in a regulated context. On an inscribed site, any works altering the appearance of the place fall under a prior declaration; on a classified site, under a special authorisation. In Saint-Paul-de-Vence, the 2020 local urban plan incorporates delimited perimeters of surroundings, updated on 26 February 2021. In Nice, it is a safeguarding and enhancement plan approved by decree that governs the perimeter of the Vieux-Nice. Taking a project through these frameworks is not form-filling: it is design work, and it is better done with someone whose trade it is.
A good project is not recognised by what it adds: it is recognised by what it has given up doing.
What we do, and what we do not
We are a contracting firm. We survey, we probe, we propose technical solutions and we carry them out. We do not substitute ourselves for design supervision, and we say so before starting rather than at the first difficult arbitration. When a client arrives without an architect on a project that calls for one, our first advice is to appoint one.
There is nothing disinterested in this: a drawn project is built better. Dimensions are settled, intentions are written down, arbitrations are decided before the first wall comes down. And the points where a project drifts — a forgotten provision, a finished level that does not fall right, an intention understood differently by two trades — are precisely those a complete set of drawings removes.
The case of projects with no obligation
There remains the grey area, the most frequent: renovations that cross no threshold and require no permission. There, the architect is not required and is not always useful. Our criterion is simple. If the project consists in redoing what exists, better, with better materials, a firm that surveys and draws its own work is enough. If the project consists in making something else of what exists — moving uses, opening up, redistributing, changing the way the place is lived in — then someone must hold the drawing of the whole, and it is not the man who fixes the first partition.
