“Living with contrasts is something very meaningful.”
We went to Paris and visited the architectural studio Mikoü, founded by the French-Moroccan twins Salwa and Selma Mikoü.
”Actually, we are twins, but we have very different ways of looking at architecture. We are very complementary, so when approaching a new project, we like to work together, but we also like to work separately at the beginning. We like drawing, we like sketching, but above all, we love speaking because words and exchanging ideas have a very deep resonance for us.”
Salwa and Selma Mikoü (b.1975 in Fez, Morocco) are French–Moroccan architects, twin sisters, and founders of Mikoü Architecture, a Paris-based practice at the intersection of architecture, cultural narratives, and material research. They founded the studio in 2008 after working at Ateliers Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano Building Workshop, respectively. From 2016 to 2018, they led Intermediate Unit 16 at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London.
Rooted in France and Morocco, the practice brings the intelligence of craft into dialogue with the demands of complex public programs. For Mikoü, every site contains traces, resources, and collective imaginaries that can become active materials for design.
”We are interested in engineering because for us all this inner structure is something like the fundamentals of architecture. It’s like a skeleton. It’s something that sometimes we don’t see, but you know it’s something so important.”
”Also, regarding climate issues, ecological transition, we had from the beginning this intuition that contemporary construction processes could embody this issue and could bring some solutions for the project and for the future of architecture. We like to assemble things because, for us, it’s very smart and also allows us to think and push forward the concept of prefabrication. We really like the idea of industrializing architecture because, for us, it’s a kind of gesture of progress. It’s a way to think architecture differently, to make it smart, but still not standard at all.”
The studio’s Atlas of Resonance is a way of reading territories through memory, local narratives, geology, climate, and craft traditions. Construction is understood as a form of writing — one that articulates relationships, makes latent structures legible, and engages with the cultural depth of a place.
Salwa and Selma Mikoü define their practice as a Manufacture of Architecture, in which technology and craftsmanship converge through a Poetics of Assembly. Prefabrication, dry construction, craft knowledge, and off-site processes are approached not only as construction strategies but as cultural and social acts that bring different histories, identities, and forms of knowledge into relation.
“I tend to say that as architects, we are building also our own personality, our own culture, our own way to see the world. And project after project, we push boundaries that could also be our own boundaries as women,” Salwa says.
Built works include Aquazena, a swimming pool and wellness center in Greater Paris; Balsanéo, an Olympic aquatic center and spa in Châteauroux; the Simone Veil School Campus in Boulogne-Billancourt; a residential tower in Nanterre; and the transformation of the former studio of Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé in Paris. Current projects include Art de Rives, a mixed-use development along the Garonne in Bordeaux; a cultural campus within rehabilitated industrial halls in Casablanca; a museum park in Normandy; and a metalworking facility for Hermès in Champigny-sur-Marne.
Salwa and Selma Mikoü also lecture internationally.
Camera: Simon Weyhe
Edit: Simon Weyhe
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2026
Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond.
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