Bring meaning, experience, organisation and resources together to develop potential — across individuals, enterprises and territories.
01 / The origin
Personal development Communication & marketing Entrepreneurship Venture Design Systemic & territorial design
Long before I called it design, personal development led me to study how people build capabilities, habits and the environments of a life. Adventure Design is my term for intentionally shaping that direction: identity, knowledge, health, relationships, autonomy and experiences.
Communication, psychology and marketing then helped me examine desire, perception and value creation. At REBIAA, these questions became decisions about brands, products, production and organisation.
My research is now expanding to the collective conditions for development: industries, institutions and territories. I want to understand what transfers between scales and what needs to be reconsidered.
02 / One framework, three scales
I use infrastructure to mean what allows an intention to take shape and endure. Four dimensions recur across scales; how they work together depends on the context.
| Scale | SymbolicCreate meaning | ExperientialShape experience | OrganisationalEnable delivery | EconomicSustain activity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| IndividualAdventure Design | SymbolicIndividual · Symbolic : Identity, values, reputation.Choose a direction and make commitments legible. Reputation also grows from consistency between what we say and what we do. | ExperientialIndividual · Experiential : Health, relationships, everyday life.Shape the experiences and environments that support well-being, connection and fulfilment. | OrganisationalIndividual · Organisational : Habits, skills, methods.Organise time, learn and adapt routines. Capabilities also depend on the resources and opportunities available to us. | EconomicIndividual · Economic : Income, savings, resilience.Connect life choices with the means to sustain them: income, assets, reserves and exposure to risk. |
| EnterpriseVenture Design | SymbolicEnterprise · Symbolic : Brand, positioning, narrative.Give a project an identity and people a reason to care. Perceived value needs to meet a credible proposition. | ExperientialEnterprise · Experiential : Products, services, uses.Design product quality and interactions, from discovery and purchase to service, use and the relationship over time. | OrganisationalEnterprise · Organisational : Production, roles, partners.Coordinate skills, equipment, governance and operations to deliver on the offer’s promise. | EconomicEnterprise · Economic : Model, margins, investment.Understand revenue, costs, financing and distribution to sustain the business and its capacity to reinvest. |
| TerritoryTerritorial & institutional design | SymbolicTerritory · Symbolic : Heritage, culture, identity.Explore how a shared history, know-how and reputation contribute to a place’s recognition without erasing its diversity. | ExperientialTerritory · Experiential : Public services, places, culture.Study access to services, the quality of spaces and experiences that shape life for residents and visitors. | OrganisationalTerritory · Organisational : Institutions, industries, coordination.Examine the rules, incentives, education, research and cooperation that enable people and organisations to act together. | EconomicTerritory · Economic : Public finance, capital, development.Examine investment choices and infrastructure financing, alongside the distribution of value and risk. |
A personal research framework. The territorial scale is an area to explore, not a claim to established institutional expertise.
03 / Excellence through relationships
An exceptional product can embody the skills, organisation and culture of a place. Its success may, in turn, help develop those capabilities.
Create, learn and pass on knowledge and skills.
Coordinate capabilities and create activities and employment.
Make a promise tangible and test it in use.
Shape resources, rules and opportunities for action.
Identity, quality requirements, environments, skills, incentives, resource allocation and feedback loops: I want to compare these mechanisms across disciplines and scales, then test them in their new context.
My collections of design and lifestyle references, including Albo saves, could provide a starting point for this comparison.
A research question · ENSCI
Design as infrastructure concerns how systems are deliberately brought together. Desire as infrastructure asks what gives them a reason to exist and mobilises people around them: meaning, perceived value, aspiration, demand and willingness to contribute or invest.
At ENSCI, I want to explore with the programme team how design can support the transformation of agricultural, craft and place-based heritage, taking account of uses, resources and transition challenges.
My hypothesis is that connecting narrative, experience, organisation and an economic model could support recognition and continuity. It needs to be examined with the people involved, tested, and evaluated for its economic, social and environmental effects. This direction remains to be refined and approved within the programme.
04 / Design intelligence
Knowledge informs imagination; concepts call for new knowledge. Strategy commits resources, execution produces observations, and learning challenges earlier choices.
C-K theory, developed by Armand Hatchuel, Benoît Weil and colleagues at Mines Paris, formalises exchanges between concepts and knowledge. It is a framework I want to study further to structure exploration.
Propositions whose status cannot yet be decided using available knowledge. Exploring them may reveal which knowledge is missing.
Propositions established within a given frame of reference. New knowledge can open unexpected design directions.
Optimisation improves a known solution against given criteria; expansive exploration may challenge its properties and generate other concepts. The project determines which approach is useful.
Explore C-K theoryNon-negotiable requirements are distinguished from preferences to weigh. There is no universal excellence score: criteria, evidence and trade-offs depend on the project.
05 / From experience to a practice
REBIAA is the first real-world case. 156 is the developing practice. Second Nature explores a working system that could support multiple projects.
Real-world experience
At REBIAA, I connected positioning, brand identity, products and services with production, partners and the economic conditions needed to deliver them.
This experience informs an approach I want to test in other contexts.
Read the REBIAA caseA studio in development
Cent Cinquante 6 is the name of my practice and a strategic and creative design studio in development. It connects research, brand development, creative direction, experience design and fabrication to reveal the potential of businesses, places and know-how.
The name refers to the family estate’s history and the time linking its acquisition to this new stage. The aim is to learn how to apply and share the approach beyond the first case.
Envisioned architecture · Exploratory research
Second Nature is the working name for an AI-assisted venture studio operating system: connecting knowledge, design, decisions, execution and learning across projects.
The three modules are architectural hypotheses. Their automation and technical capabilities have not been developed; any role within the programme remains to be discussed with the teaching team.
Discover, source and organise what could inform a project.
Knowledge intelligence: scientific and technological research, the state of the art, leading practice, methods, products, business models, standards and industrial ecosystems.
Network intelligence: identify relevant experts, suppliers, prospective clients, partners, institutions and investors. Both functions would contribute to a reusable repository of knowledge and relationships.
This would be an ongoing intelligence process: sources and information in the repository would be regularly reassessed and updated as projects develop.
Explore possibilities and inform decisions.
Connect C-K exploration, systems analysis, opportunity assessment and business-model exploration. Select useful frameworks to compare scenarios, risks and resource requirements.
The ambition is decision support that makes assumptions, criteria and uncertainties explicit, then learns as they are tested.
Coordinate experimentation and learn from its effects.
Connect prototyping, project orchestration, partners, operations and validation stages. Document quality, results and unintended effects.
Observations would feed back into knowledge and future decisions. The intended coordination capability does not imply predetermined outcomes.
The programme and placement should allow me to deepen this approach within a team before gradually developing the studio. The immediate priority is a sustainable innovation-by-design mission, with its scope and deliverables approved by the school and employer.
After the programme, French market access for premium Tunisian brands could become a case study. Brand collaborations and partnerships with REBIAA remain possibilities, dependent on demand, partners, traceability and distribution economics. None of these projects has launched.
Continue the journey
The environment in which to learn what comes next.