I met Carla Frick-Cloupet, a young architect and PhD candidate at the l’Université Jean-Monet and the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Saint-Etienne, at a seminar, themed the ‘Norm and its Contrary’, at the architectural school in Rennes in early 2020. She delivered her rigorous yet playful reading of contemporary architectural production in France and Belgium through the prism of performative verbs in what seemed like a single breath. Beyond the subject itself, her intervention communicated genuine curiosity for and engagement with architectural practice today. Carla Frick-Cloupet is also an occasional contributor to the Belgian journal A+. The referenced critique she published therein exemplifies both her attention to the political dimensions of practice as well as her signature-in-the-making style of deploying popular expressions, myths, or figures to frame her analyses. Drawing on popular culture is a way for critique to circulate – she hopes – preserving it from its dominating and academic tendencies. It is exciting to see Carla Frick-Cloupet’s voice emerge.