Farmer · Perfumer · Producer · Olfactory designer · Landscape architect · Storyteller
Nature is my intelligence.
ENSCI–Les Ateliers · Biomimicry · PhD research in progress
About
Eric Roux Reiffsteck
aka ERR
aka Ricky Roux
Éric Roux Reiffsteck is a farmer, perfumer, landscape architect, writer and filmmaker. In 2008, a turn toward agriculture in the Roya Valley brought cinema into contact with another kind of time: olive trees, medicinal plants, harvests and distillation.
From those Mediterranean beginnings, the work now extends to the Landes and Paris. Fragrance opens onto landscape; landscape becomes a place of research. Studies in design and biomimicry at ENSCI–Les Ateliers and PhD research in progress deepen this inquiry into le lien: the relationships through which we inhabit the living world.
Under the name Ricky Roux, he writes the dystopia: the same intelligence, dreaming out loud — asking what happens to a civilisation that forgets it is nature. Central conviction: creation is not the production of isolated objects. It is the revelation of relationships.
One person, two signatures
The same hands, the same land, the same intelligence — signed differently according to the work. One name tends. The other dreams.
Eric Roux Reiffsteck — ERR
Farmer, perfumer, olfactory designer and landscape architect. Through Paysan Parfumeur, an agricultural and olfactory design studio, I cultivate plants, compose botanical fragrances and design sensory landscapes. ERR signs the work that tends.
Ricky Roux
Writer, screenwriter and filmmaker. A name contracted from Eric and Roux — the red name, the maternal line — with the patronymic quietly set down. Ricky signs the work that invents: the dystopia Remembering Human, the book, the series, the imaginary. The same person, granted permission to be inconsistent, playful, dark, free.
Everything is connected. Creation is not the production of isolated objects — it is the revelation of relationships.
Research & philosophy
Natural Intelligence connects field observation, sensory experience and design. My research brings biomimicry into dialogue with biosemiotics, plant signalling and olfactory perception.
How can relationships among organisms inform the way we compose a fragrance, cultivate a place or build a technological system? Field observations and scientific findings inform the inquiry; philosophical interpretations remain open to question.
MSc studies at ENSCI–Les Ateliers, Paris. PhD research in progress.
What if the geometry of a landscape emerged from the site itself? Water movement, vegetation, shade, paths and ecological relationships become starting points for composition. A working principle guides the inquiry: protect or relink.
Explore the fieldwork →The philosophy · le lien
To soil, plants, animals, fungi, water, air, the body, smell, desire, other humans, machines, memory, death, story, transformation, the future. Re-ligare — to bind again. Smell is simply where we begin.
Nature is not scenery, inspiration or resource — it is an interlocutor. We have forgotten the relation; the work makes it perceptible again.
A dialogue between intelligences: human, vegetal, animal, ecological, cultural, artificial. Technology can bind us back to the living rather than separate us from it.
Plant volatile compounds participate in ecological interactions. Smell gives us a sensory encounter with some of those exchanges, while fragrance becomes a medium for exploring perception, memory and attention.
Story is not an illustration for the philosophy — story must be capable of contradicting it. Remembering Human puts the ideas through conflict, power and collapse.
Not nature as aesthetic, but nature as intelligence to consult: 3.8 billion years of tested solutions, translated into farming, design, economics and storytelling.
smell → perception → attention → relation → consciousness
Entrepreneurship · the hybrid economy
Entrepreneurship is not an identity here — it is a tool. A hybrid economy where commerce funds care: the soil, research, art. Profit is decomposed, redistributed, made fertile. Nothing is isolated; everything is composted. Profit for care.
Perfumery, olfactory design, landscape, writing, film — goods and stories that carry their own value.
Revenue is not a goal; it is a material. It is broken down, reinvested, put back into circulation.
The soil, the landscapes, the research, the artistic projects — everything that cannot be sold but keeps us alive.
The loop closes: what has been tended feeds the next creation. The model is alive, not extractive.
Lexicon
A personal vocabulary — and the boundaries that keep it honest.
Places · Villas Alchemica
The Villas Alchemica bring landscape, sensory experience and local intelligence into the places we inhabit. Château de Beylongue and Paris Saint-Bernard are two expressions of this ongoing work.
01 / Landes · Landscape practice in progress
At Château Bétan, in Beylongue, the paysage paysan brings cultivation and landscape composition into the same field of attention. The orchard, vegetable garden, aromatic plants, woodland and pond are considered through their relationships: where water travels, where shade settles, where people and other living beings move.
The practice connects agricultural planting, botanical fragrance and sensory routes. The New Le Nôtre provides a working question: how can pathways and planting patterns respond to the living conditions of the site?
Wetland planting, pond ecology, prospective aquaculture and energy autonomy are areas of study and development.
02 / Paris · Urban practice in progress
The Paris Villa Alchemica brings the same inquiry into an urban setting. Here the scale changes: a courtyard, an interior, light, plants, scent and the everyday experience of a place. The work explores how sensory design and attention to living conditions can shape inhabitation.
One Brain is the technological component being developed for the Villas Alchemica: local computing, environmental observation and tools for understanding water, energy and maintenance. The ambition is a digital landscape that develops alongside the living landscape, with privacy and local control at its core.
The agricultural turn began here in 2008, among olive trees and medicinal plants near the Mediterranean border with Italy. Cultivation and distillation remain the foundations of the work.
At Domaine Deva Chen, medicinal and aromatic planting, paths and sensory composition extend the practice into the Landes landscape.
Writing & cinema
Writing and filmmaking remain active parts of my practice. Ricky Roux is my authorial signature for fiction: a space in which ideas can become characters, desires and contradictions.
A dystopian universe created by Ricky Roux and developed by Sun Sun Studio for a book, television and vertical microdrama. The story asks what remains human when desire, power and technology reshape our relationships.
Enter the fictional universe ↗Essays and field notes connect agriculture, scent, ecology and artistic practice. The Selfie Paysan writing project traces the agricultural turn and the search for a life rooted in the living world.
Read the essays ↗The ecosystem · one person, three manifestations
Not a portfolio, an organism. The land feeds the fragrance; the fragrance funds the story; the story tests the philosophy; the philosophy returns to the land.
«How can the invisible state of a landscape become perceptible?»
Paysan Parfumeur is an agricultural and olfactory design studio dedicated to cultivating plants, composing botanical fragrances and designing sensory landscapes, indoors and outdoors.
«How do we make the relation with the living world perceptible?»
An independent creative production studio developing films, television series, microdramas, podcasts and AI harnesses. Its projects include Remembering Human, One Brain and Nature is my Intelligence.
«What happens when a civilisation forgets it is nature?»
A dystopian fictional universe created by Ricky Roux, developed for literature, television and vertical microdrama by Sun Sun Studio. A world in development, where desire, power and technology test what it means to remain human.
Three vessels, one person. The subject underneath all of them is the same: le lien — the link.
Mycelium · the structure of the link
Mycelium offers a metaphor for this practice: places, ideas and disciplines connected through relationships. Follow a node to explore the work. The links below offer another way into the same network.
A mycelium does not grow in straight lines. It weaves, tries, connects — and sometimes, underground, two distant trees discover they had been together from the start.