François Roche

In 2016, Frac Centre-Val de Loire held a retrospective of Roche's work with New Territories/M4.

Roche and Lacadée launched a Kickstarter to raise funds to an "experimental hybrid building" called MMYST. The project was to be built by robots in Thailand. In May 2015, Roche, Lacadée, and Pierre Huyghe to create "What Could Happen," an "experimental expedition" in the Swiss Alps. In October 2015, he lectured with Lacadée at the University of Michigan's Taubman College. That same month, Roche and Lacadée exhibited #mythomaniaS at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The exhibit included videos of "architectural scenarios" around the world. Roche's professional partnership with Lacadée ended in 2015.

While speaking in at an event in London in 2010, Roche shared that he would be "happy" if somebody went into one of his buildings or designs, got lost, and died. That same year, Roche ended his professional relationship with Lavaux and began working with Camille Lacadée. In 2011, the avatar used to represent the R&Sie(n) committed "suicide" only to re-emerge in 2017. Around 2013, Roche opened a studio in the Talat Noi neighborhood of Bangkok. Before relocating from Paris to Bangkok, Roche transformed his Paris house in a project called I'm Lost in Paris. The project involved cultivating bacteria which turned into vegetation covering the house.

In 2004, R&Sie(n) created DustyRelief for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bangkok, Thailand. The piece was designed to absorb the city smog, which would then cause the structure to grow. The piece was inspired by Man Ray's Dust Breeding. The project was canceled due to a coup d'état.

Roche's work has been exhibited at Mori Art Museum, Columbia University, the Pompidou Center, the Museum of Modern Art, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University and other museums and galleries. Roche has exhibited in the Venice Biennale multiple times, including in 2004's Metamorph International Architecture Exposition; the 2008 International Architecture Exposition in which R&Sie exhibited their "bi[r]o-bo[o]ts"; the 2014 "Time Space Existence: Made in Europe" biennale; and 2018 at the Bembo Pavilion and the Lithuanian Pavilion. Roche has also participated as a panelist at the 2012 United States pavilion. His 2010 installation, Building Which Never Dies, was confiscated by Italian police for containing uranium. The incident caused an entire section of the Biennale to be closed for an entire day.

The Frac Centre-Val de Loire calls Roche's early work as veering "towards hybridization and “hyperlocalism”, aimed at distorting reality and bringing out its most significant unusualness." In 1996, Roche started using digital processes to create his work. Roche's later works also incorporate robotics complemented by writing and lectures.

Since the 1990s, Roche has been represented by an androgynous, digitally created avatar named s/he. Roche describes s/he as "a kind of doppelgänger, a Siamese twin, the mask of Mishima, an avatar of Vishnu. Androgynous in appearance and with a queer attitude, s/he has enabled me for twenty-five years to maintain a singular voice, coming from nowhere, emerging from territories that abandoned the posture of authority, of discourse, and of academia."

Roche founded his first studio in Paris in 1989. He expanded to incorporate Stephanie Lavaux as a partner, naming the studio R&Sie(n) The "R" in the name is for Roche, the "S" is for Stephanie, and is pronounced similarly to the word "heresy" in French. The studio specializes in architectural "investigations" and "scenarios" with the goal of connecting the relationship between humans and buildings. Roche would go on to create New Territories/M4, which houses R&Sie, along with other installation, architectural, and digital design projects, with partner Camille Lacadée.

François Roche (born 1961) is a French architect. Roche is the co-founder and director of R&Sie(n) Architects and the research architectural firm, New Territories/M4.

François Roche was born in 1961 in Paris, France. Roche sought to study science and math in college, but, was unable to enroll in a specific class he wanted to attend and changed his degree to architecture. His interest in the sciences would go on to influence his architectural work. He spent time in an Algerian desert during his time in college, deciding if he wanted to finish his degree in architecture. In 1987, he graduated from the École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Versailles.