Designing with living systemsTerritorial StrategyNature-Based SolutionsRewilding landscapes & narrativesClimate Adaptation
I design with what is already there: the soil, the water, the ecosystems, the biodiversity.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Richard Buckminster Fuller
Trained as an architect, I develop a practice at the intersection of ecological design, territorial strategy and rewilding.
Each project begins by exploring the place, its systems, its resources, its actors, and co-building climate change responses with local communities and stakeholders, in situ, with those who inhabit and shape the territory.
From watershed planning to living soil prototypes, from wildfire prevention to wildlife corridors, I work at every scale.
I am a designer, a strategist and a facilitator. I bring communities, institutions and private clients together around solutions that come from nature and benefit both people and ecosystems.
Research and storytelling are at the heart of my practice. I explore how territories can be read, mapped and reimagined, and how a story can change the way we relate to the living world. Through research programmes, curatorial projects and installations, I create new ecological imaginaries.
Founder of Constellations Sauvages ↗, a transdisciplinary association bringing together artists, scientists, experts, inhabitants and researchers to explore, rethink and transform our relationship to the wild. Rewilding the way we inhabit the earth.
Portfolio available on request · Contact
The living world already holds the solutions.
Soil filters, roots bind, water finds its path, materials grow and return to the earth. I design objects, spaces and territorial strategies that work with these processes instead of replacing them, with no mineral extraction and no petrochemicals.
Design with living systems
Objects, materials, spaces and installations that use the intelligence of nature.
Territorial and ecological strategies
Living-systems design at the scale of the territory: corridors, watersheds, fire prevention, rewilding.
Landscape design and nature-based solutions
Public and outdoor spaces built with soil, water, plants and bio-based materials.
Co-design workshops
In situ, with those who inhabit and shape the territory.
Territorial research and mapping
Reading, mapping and reimagining places.
Curatorial projects, installations and narratives
New ecological imaginaries, shared through exhibitions and stories.
Regional nature parks and municipalities, environmental consultancies, private landowners and foundations, NGOs and conservation organisations, EU-funded territorial projects, brands, fashion and cultural houses.
In ecology, capacity is the maximum a system can carry, hold or produce without degrading. Applied to the planet, it questions how we inhabit, produce and design our territories.
Today our systems go far beyond these limits. Climate change, resource depletion and environmental and social exhaustion are deeply linked. Urban resources are used faster than they can renew, leaving an ecological debt to future generations. Climate uncertainty makes territories more vulnerable, cities above all.
This is why nature has to become a central actor of the project.
- From extraction to regeneration
- Natural cycles back at the heart of design
- Local, closed-loop systems that answer today’s emergencies
- Ecological flows, social dynamics and economies, linked across scales
- Rooted in local contexts and territorial heritage
The aim is to make territories more resilient, by revealing their ecological potential and building lasting forms of coexistence between natural environments and human societies.
That is where my work stands: building planetary capacities through design, territorial strategy, facilitation, research and storytelling.
Where I bring the living.
Strategic rewilding
Initiating and guiding rewilding strategies, from the first vision to landscapes that restore themselves.
Living alongside wildlife
Designing spaces and solutions that let people and wild species share the same land.
Living ground
Pavements and public surfaces made from living and bio-based matter, ready to be built and walked on.
Ephemeral living architecture
Temporary structures for luxury houses and fashion shows, grown and assembled from living and recyclable materials, then returned to the soil. Each one invites people into another rhythm: the slow time of the living.
Living outdoor spaces
Public and outdoor spaces built with the living: soil, water, plants and the simple local systems that have always worked.
Living interiors and installations
Indoor design and installations that grow, breathe and change with time.
Natural systems at every scale
Bringing natural processes into projects, from an object to a whole territory.
Climate adaptation
Nature-based responses to heat, drought, fire and flooding.
Let’s build with the living.
contact@mariepetrault.com
Portfolio available on request.
Based in Provence, France. Working internationally.