Amelia Tavella was born at the height of summer in Ajaccio. She grew up between the maquis and the sea, in a land where rock emerges to the surface, where light sculpts volumes, and where the horizon teaches patience. Her native island was her first school: it taught her beauty, the urgency of protecting it, and the necessity of respect. There, she discovered that any creation worthy of the name carries responsibility, and that history is never a burden but a foundation.
Growing up on an island is growing up with the sea. The gaze stretches far; reefs become forms, the lines of the land turn into drawings, mountain ridges into a form of writing. The maquis—dense and free—becomes a space in its own right, both sensitive and formative. Childhood is a prelude: very early on, the desire for architecture preceded the studies Amelia Tavella would later pursue at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris.
In 2007, she founded her practice. Daughter, woman, mother, she claims an architecture that is committed, free, and resilient—attentive to uses and to places. Her work was quickly recognized, earning her the Prix de la Jeune Femme Architecte, the Pierre Cardin Prize of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and a place in the Choiseul Ville de Demain ranking. Her approach has been praised for its ability to bring architecture into dialogue with art, landscape, and society, through an open and transdisciplinary practice.
Amelia Tavella collaborates with artists, writers, historians, and sociologists. Alongside Pauline Guerrier, Ange Leccia, Nina Bouraoui, as well as researchers and heritage practitioners, she develops a body of work nourished by the crossing of perspectives. From the Convent of Saint-François—acclaimed for its contemporary graft linking past and present—to the Thermal Baths of Balaruc-les-Bains, from Château de Nalys to schools rooted in the maquis, each project unfolds as a form of sensitive archaeology.
She approaches each site with the precision of an archaeologist: reading, excavating, understanding before intervening. Honoring what already exists, extending without erasing. Building without undoing, inventing without disavowing. Her architecture is attentive to materials, to detail, to the right gesture. Stone, wood, copper, and water become language. The relationship to material is sensual, almost carnal—a skin that envelops, protects, and tells a story.
Her architecture is described as “sensitive” because it always arises from the place that receives it. She never separates the building from the space already there—whether natural or urban. Each project becomes a form of marriage between what is and what is to come. It is an architecture of long time, one that embraces slowness, depth, and memory.
Committed to transmission, Amelia Tavella exhibits, teaches, and regularly takes part in international conferences and juries. Her work has been shown in France and across Europe and has received numerous distinctions. A finalist for the 2024 European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture – Mies van der Rohe Award, she now fully belongs to a European architectural scene attentive to heritage, landscape, and sustainability.
The year 2025 marked a turning point. Nominated for the international DIVIA Prize and invited to Rome and São Paulo, Amelia Tavella carried her architectural thinking beyond borders, engaging in an open dialogue between culture, circularity, heritage, and the future. Her voice has grown within an international arena where architecture becomes a tool for connection and transmission.
In 2026, she established her practice in Paris, on Île Saint-Louis—an inner island bordered by the Seine, where water, stone, and memory resonate with one another. Construction began on the O’Balia Thermal Baths, bringing care, landscape, and architecture into dialogue, while the completion of Château de Nalys crowned a body of work deeply attentive to terroir, stone, and the spirit of place.
Thus unfolds an architecture rooted in its origins and oriented toward the future—an architecture that transmits, repairs, and connects.