My path does not fit into a single category. Over more than forty years, I have moved from civil engineering to character real estate, from enterprise to writing — without ever ceasing to connect the concrete and the human.
The built environment, first
Everything begins in the field. A technical diploma in civil engineering drafting, then design offices and major construction sites — EDF at Cruas, the Eurodif facility, architectural practices. I learn what holds and what fails: forces, spans, the rigour of structure. For a time I work as a methods draughtsman, including at SGN in the nuclear sector — a brief stage.
The balance of places and people
Another attentiveness has always been part of me: that of balance — of people as of places. I took an interest in it early on, without ever making it a single profession, and from it grew my way of accompanying others: perceiving what, in a place or in those who occupy it, sustains or hinders balance — and helping to restore it.
From the building trade to sales
The need for fieldwork and direct contact first leads me toward sales, as a commercial agent in individual house construction. It is there that an interest takes hold that will never leave me: the way a place sustains, or hinders, those who inhabit it — spatial reading, Feng Shui, circulation analysis.
Irrinium, character real estate, then Hornwell
In 1998, I found Irrinium with a clear ambition: to design quality homes — careful architecture, noble materials, attention to the site and to those who live in it. This standard appealed, but it raised costs significantly; the market of the time was not ready to fund it. I then redirect the company toward character real estate: from 2000, Irrinium obtains its professional licences and devotes itself to the transmission of distinctive homes and estates steeped in history. An early adopter of the internet when agencies were still betting on print media, I extend this activity from national to international reach. In 2011, I incorporate a separate company in Hong Kong, Hornwell International, for a global real estate portal run in parallel with Irrinium; with my son, we spend two years developing an exhaustive specification. The serious failure of the service provider brings the project to a halt — a setback, but an invaluable education in large-scale systems.
Research, then the book
In 2022, I found a Laboratoire Conscientiel, a research space on consciousness — attention, perception, and the dynamics that hold a collective together. It is from this long process of reflection that La Sageocratie was born: a proposal for governance by lucidity rather than by power. Not a utopia, nor an ideology — a direction. The manuscript was finalised in May 2026.
Underlying this entire journey is a conviction I impose on no one: consciousness is not a by-product of matter — it is its source. That is where, for me, everything connects.
From civil engineering to writing, a continuous trajectory at the intersection of the concrete and the human.
Accompanying distinctive homes and historically significant estates — since 2000.
Research space on consciousness and collective dynamics, founded in 2022.
Manuscript finalised in 2026. Governing by lucidity, not by power.