Three years.
In architecture, three years is the blink of an eye. It’s the time it takes for a foundation to properly cure, for initial steelwork to rise against a skyline, for the first draft of a dream to take on the rough, skeletal shape of reality. For me, those three years had been a lifetime of reconstruction.
Paris had become more than a refuge; it had become my forge. Working under Hélène’s fierce mentorship and later, alongside her brilliant partner, Antoine Dubois, I had rediscovered the architect I was meant to be before Julian Vance had tried to shrink my world to the size of his ego. The Louvre expansion, once a daunting specter, became my canvas. I poured every ounce of my reclaimed self into its design—the pain, the clarity, the quiet strength I’d found in the ashes. The p
