Nicolas Michelin (born 25 January 1955) is a French architect and urban planner. After joining forces with Finn Geipel to form LABFAC in 1988, he founded Agence Nicolas Michelin & Associés (ANMA) in 2000, which he currently runs in collaboration with his partners Michel Delplace and Cyril Trétout. He also has a firm dedicated to experimental projects called Studio Maé.
Michelin was born in 1955 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Paris, the sixth of nine children. His father was an architect from Paris and the grandson of André Michelin, co-founder of Michelin. His mother was a nurse from Marseille and the granddaughter of Pierre Puiseux. Michel received his in physics and mathematics at Paris VI University before beginning his studies in architecture at the ÃÂcole dâÂÂArchitecture de Paris-Conflans in 1974.
Michelin worked with architects Xavier Henry and Christoph Lyon in Paris between 1981 and 1987. In 1988, he and German architect Finn Geipel founded the architecture firm Laboratory for Architecture (LABFAC), working between Paris and Berlin. Some of the notable projects from this collaboration included the in Limoges and the in Quimper. Between 1985 and 2000, he directed the ÃÂcole and Centre dâÂÂArt Contemporain in Rueil-Malmaison.
In 2000, along with Michel Delplace and Cyril Trétout, he founded Agence Nicolas Michelin & Associés (ANMA), a firm involved in architecture, urban design and landscaping. He also founded the ', an arts centre (ENSAV) dedicated to research on the role of art in the urban environment, within the ÃÂcole nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles, and was the head director between the years of 2000 and 2009. In 2008, he was the general curator for AGORA, a biennial architecture, urban planning and design exhibition, in Bordeaux. In 2010, for ANMA's 10-year anniversary, he organised a 4-day event to showcase some of the projects designed by ANMA in the past decade; this was published in Michelin's 2010 book Attitudes. The event also featured an exhibition with debates on ecology, the city and contemporary art. Similarly, the 2017 book ANMA - Arquitectura 2001-2017 showcased some of the firm's competition-winning designs since its inception.
Michelin has written for and overseen more than seven publications. In 2005, he wrote Nouveau Paris, la ville et ses possibles, the catalogue accompanying the eponymous exhibition at the Pavillon de l'Arsenal (17 March to 28 August 2005). Created with Toyo Ito, the exhibition explored possible future developments in Paris, bearing in mind the requirements of sustainable development and new urban lifestyles. His 2008 book Cinq sur cinq â Dix projets sur mesure analysed five architectural and urban projects completed by ANMA. In 2008, following AGORA, he wrote Alerte! Et si on pensait un peu plus àelle?, a manifesto in favour of sustainable architecture and urban design. In 2010, he released a film, Bordeaux 2046, for the Venice Biennial that looked at a number of projects underway and offered fictional representations of possible future projects for the city. Michelin has also been a guest speaker at universities and conferences around the world. In 2011, he chaired a forum on "heritage and architecture of sustainable cities" at Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris.
In 2005, he was awarded the Legion of Honour with the distinction of Chevalier. The following year, Gilles Coudert of a.p.r.e.s production directed a short film, Vers une hybridation des usages - Portrait de Nicolas Michelin, about Michelin and his work. This came after he won a 2005 design competition for the ARTEM campus in Nancy.