Simon Leuckx took the first step in architecture during his internship in business at college, performed with an architect of the Buildings of France. His taste for heritage comes when he once entered Paris-La Villette – one of the most international schools in France – he realizes an Erasmus year in Venice, where he follows the restaurant specialty (catering). Thanks to professors integrated into international networks (Unesco, Oxfam, Architects Without Borders), he benefits from a pedagogy rooted in strong social realities: “I graduated under the supervision of Philippe Revault, who worked for the UNESCO. He proposed to conduct an urban project in Sarajevo, based on a very detailed analysis of the context, also framed by Agnès Deboulet, sociologist, providing the guarantee of substantive work. (…) Prefiguring this work, I wrote my graduation thesis on the rehabilitation of the old center of Split in Croatia”.

Between companies and institutions, activities social orientation

The graduated obtains the HMONP within the large Parisian agency ENIA, for which he works on international technical projects, in collaboration with the largest French consulting firms. He is more vigilant of this experience, willing to work in a more human context, convinced of the necessary “Overall consideration of the context in the context of a project, on the contrary to a logic where the succession of professionals clustered in their specialties”. For three years, he is master contractor in his own name, mainly as a subcontractor for colleagues, he diversifies projects and contacts. He then worked for the Bailly Leblanc agency, patrimony architects specializing in regulatory urban planning, while following the prestigious patrimony training of the École de Chaillot in Paris. The architect is accomplished at Chaillot, especially when he participates in the cross workshop organized by Professor Benjamin Mouton with Tongji University in China. He understands that in France or elsewhere, being an architect of patrimony is an intellectual added value.

Catering in Angkor, Cambodia

At the age of thirty-three, with his experience and knowledge, Simon Leuckx is selected by the French School of the Far East (EFEO) to be responsible for the operation of a restoration site of the Angkor temples in Cambodia. The UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place of convergence for many cultural and diplomatic actors. Simon Leuckx takes over from a long history of partnership in research and restoration. Together with a site manager, he is responsible for providing three-year period monitoring of the day-to-day operations of the Western Mebon Temple. He dialogues with researchers, archaeologists and draftsmen. But also with more than one hundred stonemasons, sculptors, carpenters, machine operators. The architect compares the pharaonic site of the temple to those that took place in France in the Middle Ages: “The architect is master contractor, he is responsible for the workers, security, the arrival of materials, the project and technical details “. Simon Leuckx brought his wife and two young children, who enrolled in a French school. The family overcame the first difficulties of settling in a previously unknown country to enjoy their new experience.

Portrait by Laura Rosenbaum – Architect DEHMONP – Doctor of Sociology