Watch this 3-minute video, it sums up the whole article! It’s a public invitation, to all my friends - not architects at all - to start a collective mutual aid project. It extends to you.
Coming up for air, together
what wouldn’t fit in three minutes of video
Three facts that make mutual aid - codev (co-development peer groups) - obvious:
One. To get out of our damaging working conditions, there’s no help to expect from anyone but ourselves; not from the State, not from institutions, not from some tutelary figure coming to save us. It’s you, and it’s us, together, and that’s it.
Two. And yet, we all have treasures; not just technical skills, but above all our experiences - what we’ve been through in our struggles, things you can’t learn from a book. A kind of practical wisdom, not a single truth; just something concrete that says to the other person: it’s possible.
Three. But we’re underwater; no time, no space, no energy. The job, the grind, the isolation crush us together, and everyone keeps holding on alone, thinking it’s just them.
The circle closes right there, because when you’re underwater you don’t have time to come up for air and look for what others have to offer; and because you keep struggling alone, your head stays under.
It’s structural, not individual, and it doesn’t get solved by one more act of willpower - it gets solved by spaces that are dedicated, formalised, regular, built around affinity.
Why we don’t go, honestly
Isn’t there a kind of “comfort” in being underwater - the comfort of not having to face the vertiginous questions waiting for us when the noise and the busyness stop?
I know that most of the time, this kind of proposal (codev, sharing, “sitting with things together”) falls flat. First because there’s a laziness around showing vulnerability with people you don’t know that well. Then because we don’t have the culture for it, we never learned; because there’s often shame (shame at being under pressure, at cracking, at not holding it together, things you wouldn’t want to spread around); and finally because you tell yourself you have friends for that. Except that when you see your friends, you don’t always want to bring the mood down with your problems - you enjoy the moment, it feels good, until you get home with your ruminations churning inside you.
That’s exactly why you need dedicated spaces; not to replace friends (on the contrary, it takes the weight off them of having to carry everything), but to finally give us somewhere that what we’re going through is expected, welcomed, with no apology required, within a dedicated, bounded frame.
What we’re looking for, and what we’re not
What we’re not looking for
Not unions. Not out of contempt - out of lucidity about my own practice. I don’t go, because I don’t have the time and because I don’t want to be in hard, combative spaces with no affinity or particular shared interest. Inherited structures (unions, professional orders, associations) assume a fighting stance or a professional homogeneity that doesn’t touch the care dimension I’m after.
Not technical stuff. It’s not forbidden, it’s just that when I have a technical, legal or regulatory problem, I notice I find the resources. That’s not where things get stuck. What gets stuck is elsewhere, it’s usually deeper than that.
Not top-down help. The expert mentor who knows and dispenses, no. What I’m describing is horizontal. With friends, with peers, with people you already have a connection with.
What we are looking for, then
Not an answer - a space. Somewhere to zoom out.
Because what eats us alive in a job as complicated as ours is rarely a lack of information. It’s the confusion. The margins, the grey zones, the thing I haven’t had time to look at: the prospecting I keep putting off, the conflictual conversation I keep postponing, the thing I don’t know how to name but that lives in me. Because confusion paralyses. It stresses.
Being able to talk about it, just being heard - it brings air back in. It brings movement back. It gives you access again to what you already knew but couldn’t see anymore because you had your head down.
Codev, concretely
An hour and a half, with three people, with people you already have a bit of trust with - ideally a shared context (friends first, and maybe later other people from the network; starting with people you know to practise showing vulnerability is already a lot).
Each person in turn gets 30 minutes to share a problem, something that’s working on you, something that’s stuck, looping, ruminating. The other two listen first - that’s all they do, they’re just there, attentive, reflecting or rephrasing what they hear (that’s often already enough); and depending on what’s asked for, they can then share an experience (their own lived story placed alongside yours), or give advice if they have some and you ask for it - always to help zoom out, to see what you couldn’t see anymore.
And it can also, quite straightforwardly, be used however you want: checking in with friends, talking about what’s doing you good, sharing something that moved you. That’s part of what it’s for too; the frame is there so there’s somewhere in the week, not to put a programme in place of the encounter.
My own experience: during a very intense training programme, a group of us friends started practising this in trios, every week, to get through the training and its upheavals together. And under pressure, on the day I’d often tell myself it was too much and we should cancel; and every time I left, I’d tell myself it had been one of the moments of greatest clarity, of awareness, of feeling useful that week. What we said worked really well: it’s practical to talk between us, it went fast because we spoke the same language and had the same context, there was nothing to re-explain; and talking about our problems with people who get us brings the pressure down, makes you feel more legitimate, more confident, able to zoom out and unblock things you’d been turning over alone.
It feels good, actually.
That’s it, and it’s already huge.
COME
MEETUP THIS THURSDAY - LET’S CELEBRATE FIRST - BECAUSE YES.
And as a bonus, you can leave with two people you’ve chosen to start your own codev.
This Thursday May 7th, at the Paname Brewing Company (PBC), 41bis quai de Loire, I’m proposing an open gathering. The idea is to meet up and celebrate: I invite my friends (not just architects, far from it), you do the same, and everyone brings whoever they want, shares the video with whoever might be touched by it (the more varied the profiles on Thursday, the more the trios that form will have to work with). The pretext is the encounter and a concert starting at 8:30pm; you can also come just for the concert and that’s completely fine.
Before the concert, we’ll do a meeting game, simple, designed so we discover each other. At the end of the game, those who want to can leave with a trio; and if you haven’t found your two people in the room, I’ve built a small app that connects what you need right now with what others have to offer (and the other way around) - we use it to assemble what can be assembled.
And so you’re not left on your own after this Thursday, I’m offering to host a video call every week, probably on Friday lunchtimes. You come or you don’t, that’s fine; it’s for introducing yourself to the other trios, completing ones that are missing someone, giving ourselves a shared frame. You show up as you are: with a topic you’ve already explored in your trio and want to open up to others, with a theme to explore more broadly, or just to stay with the rest of the group around a collective theme. Light frame, free attendance, that’s it; and that’s already a real proposition.
Why this matters
It’s a culture of care we’re trying to build, against the culture of the crunch, of every-person-for-themselves; you don’t get out of that culture by decree, you get out of it through the spaces you build and hold together, where transitions and the doubts they carry have somewhere to land. No help to expect from others doesn’t mean figure it out alone - it means the opposite: the help is in us, and the political gesture is to put ourselves in the conditions to let it circulate.
What you can do
If the video spoke to you, share it with two or three people who might feel it too.
If you’re curious but not sure, come for the concert at 8:30pm, and we’ll see what happens.
And if you want to try the thing, come at 6:30pm for the game, and you’ll leave with your trio.
See you Thursday.
Practical note: Doors at 6:30pm, meeting game at 7pm, concert at 8:30pm. Paname Brewing Company (PBC), 41bis quai de Loire. If you want to talk it through beforehand, write to me.