Designing the right tool, for the right purpose, at the right level of complexity.
manifesto / the principle of rightness
workshop / living manifesto / 2026
The art of giving shape to ideas.
I am Thomas Cohu. Trained as a mathematician and crafting software for twenty-five years, I give shape to ideas by blending data, technology, collective intelligence and creation.
After the service company, the public interest, the startup and the large corporation, I chose the workshop : a place to design with rigour, at the right level of complexity, without losing sight of people or poetry.
the right place / the right level
rigour + bonds + imagination
01 / one conviction
Technology is a means. Never an end.
An innovation is not worth much for its novelty, but for the place it finds in real life : what it makes possible, whom it benefits, what it costs and what it keeps from being damaged.
The right purpose
Start from people, uses and the common good. Technology should support an intention, not replace it.
The right complexity
Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sobriety, readability, maintenance and real costs are part of the product.
The right relationship with people
Create tools that increase autonomy, understanding and the ability to act — rather than dependence or lock-in.
02 / three materials
Three strengths, one single gesture.
Lamèche Studio is the meeting of three stories that long ran in parallel : data, the collective and creation. Their combination gives the workshop its shape.
Data & systems
Trained as a mathematician and a data professional for twenty-five years, I have worked on BI, big data, data science and AI, in technical, product, marketing and management roles. I like to understand what happens under the hood — without losing sight of what we are trying to accomplish.
Collectives & organisations
Introduced early to the psycho-sociology of organisations and to collective intelligence, I practise a kind of management that is attentive to individuals and group dynamics. A good project does not simply place expertises side by side : it connects them, moves past egos and crosses silos.
Creation & poetry
As a musician and a maker, I am not satisfied with a purely accounting and industrial approach to digital things. Play, aesthetics, emotion and poetry are not ornaments : they take part in the quality of an object and in the relationship we build with it.
rigour + cooperation + imagination = products that stand up and make you want them
03 / several worlds
Twenty-five years of changing perspective.
I was lucky to learn digital craft in very different contexts. Each of them left me a way of seeing, a standard and a few good reflexes.
starting out
IT services companies
Development, business intelligence, data and business analysis. There I learned the culture of service, listening to business teams, the constraints of the field and the importance of delivering something that actually works.
public interest
Innovation at Apec
Head of innovation in a public-interest association : understanding uses, bringing out ideas, mobilising collectives and putting technology at the service of a mission larger than itself.
entrepreneurship
Partner in an AI startup
At Proxem, I took part in building a product, a market and a team, with product and marketing responsibilities, up to the acquisition of the company by Dassault Systèmes.
changing scale
AI products in a large corporation
At Dassault Systèmes, I worked on data and AI products in an international environment : industrialisation, product strategy, management, complex cooperation and large-scale vision.
today
Choosing the workshop
Lamèche Studio brings together the best of these worlds in a more direct, freer and more craft-like practice : understand, connect, experiment, then build with care.
04 / artificial intelligence
AI is a multiplier. It can multiply the bad as well as the good.
It can accelerate overproduction, capture and concentration. It can also make accessible tools, knowledge and creative capacities that were until now reserved for a few organisations.
What it can amplify
- complexity added for its own sake
- the capture of attention and data
- the standardisation of ideas and forms
- the concentration of technological power
What it can make possible
- fast, accessible prototypes
- chosen and well-understood automations
- new educational and creative tools
- useful solutions at a small scale
The point is not to add AI everywhere. It is to know where it deserves to be — and to use it to increase our ability to act rather than our dependence.
05 / open workshop
Currently on the workbench.
Two games are taking shape at the workshop, between riddles, logic and monsters waiting to metamorphose. Around them, other projects, prototypes and detours keep being made.
TetraQuiz
A riddle and logic game created with Argyx Games.
Discover TetraQuiz
Monstres Papillons
An original arcade game that reinvents the JezzBall mechanic : build barriers, isolate the monsters and set them free as butterflies.
Read the making-of notebookTalk with a book without reducing it to a summary.
Explore the ideas, characters, style and passages of a book with an AI that knows how to come back to the text.
A story factory.
A space to write, to connect characters, scenes, notes and drawings, and to let AI support creation without taking the pen.
Learn by playing — without noticing it.
Simple, accessible and lively mobile formats to pass on knowledge and make people want to keep exploring.
Tools to collect, classify and pass on.
Applications, data and editorial experiences around books, comics and cultural objects — designed with their communities.
06 / working together
Three gestures, depending on the stage of the project.
The manifesto does not prevent the practical. A collaboration can start with a working day, a prototype or a complete build.
See more clearly.
Understand the problem, get perspectives to talk, identify uses and choose a realistic direction.
Learn fast.
Build a prototype, test a hypothesis, verify an architecture and produce the first tangible feedback.
Make it stand.
Design and develop the product, arbitrate with rightness, document and hand over so that it can keep going without me.
interlude / the name
Why “Lamèche”?
Tom La Mèche is a nickname given by friends in the final year of my master’s degree, because of a hairstyle that is now hard to defend. It became my name as a musician, then the name of the workshop.
This wink also tells the spirit of the place : keeping life, creativity and a little poetry in what we make.
Taking things very seriously, without taking ourselves too seriously.
07 / opening a conversation
An idea to put on the workbench?
If you are working on a cultural, educational, collective, ecological or simply useful project — and looking to give it a fitting digital shape — we probably have things to talk about.
Paris · remote · assignments in France & Europe