Francis Baucher
Bio
Francis Baucher is an architect and Digital Strategy Director at Arte Charpentier, an 80-person firm with offices in Paris, Shanghai, Wuhan, and Cotonou.
Trained as an architect with eight years of practice in the field, he now leads the firm's artificial intelligence and data valorisation initiatives. There, he has built an in-house toolchain that currently frees up nearly 15% of the time previously absorbed by support tasks.
His approach rests on a core principle: tools are interchangeable, data is structural. Rather than imposing a single solution, he develops processes tailored to each team's workflows, connected through a shared data layer, and makes continuous adaptation the discipline's natural reflex.
His keynote at RELEASE [AEC] 2026, "AI as Infrastructure: Automating the Invisible in Agency Workflows", advocates for a practice-led approach positioning AI where it delivers genuine value, while regularly reassessing existing setups as its capabilities evolve.
