Maël de Quelen, Chief Architect of Historic Monuments and heritage architect, shares her deep passion for restoring historical sites and passing on traditional know-how.

👉 Beneath the surface, she offers a clear-eyed and sensitive vision of her profession: preserving without freezing, restoring so that places continue to live.

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In this episode of Com d’Archi, we meet Maël de Quelen, Chief Architect of Historic Monuments and heritage architect, founder of her eponymous agency in Paris.

Guided since childhood by a love for historic places and an acute awareness of their fragility, she retraces her journey alongside major figures — Thierry Algrain, Lionel Dubois, Benjamin Mouton — and her commitment to restoring churches, châteaux, and emblematic sites of our shared history.

Through concrete examples, from the Château de Chambord to the Collegiate Church of Saint-Yved in Braine, she reflects on the beauty of craftsmanship, the richness of collaborative work, and the singular emotion that arises on restoration sites.

Maël also speaks about her relationship to long timeframes, the humility required in conservation, and her hope in the younger generation that is finding its way back to heritage work.

👉 An inspiring conversation at the crossroads of past and future, where hand, material, and memory come together to give new life to monuments.

🎧 A must-listen episode for anyone who believes that saving stone is a way to illuminate tomorrow.

📌 Com d’Archi is an independent podcast dedicated to architecture and to those who shape it.

🎙️ Interview with Maël de Quelen by Anne-Charlotte Depondt

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This English version was generated using AI with voice cloning, preserving the speakers’ timbre (Maël and Anne-Charlotte) and their natural French accent. This MP3 is not perfect because of the technic very new but it allow to access to a so interesting conversation. 

Audio production comdarchipodcast

Teaser image © Maël de Quelen

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