In order to finance her education, she began to work for French writer, architect, and urban planner Philippe Boudon.

She graduated in 1978 from École nationale supérieure d'architecture de Paris-La Villette with a diploma in urban planning from the Paris Institute of Political Studies in 1979.

[4] The buildings they completed for the Banque Populaire de l’Ouest in Rennes with Peter Rice in 1990 brought them numerous awards and international recognition.

[6] Decq has stated that her philosophy on architecture is that a building " has to be a place where people can move, live in good conditions, forget the hardness of the life outside, so it has to have a kind of humanistic approach..."[7] She has "been faithful to her fighting attitude while diversifying and radicalizing her research.

Other than just a style, an attitude or a process, Odile Decq's work materializes a complete universe that embraces urban planning, architecture, design and art.

She left in 2012 and subsequently designed and opened her own school, Confluence Institute for Innovation and Creative Strategies in Architecture, https://www.confluence.eu/ in Lyon, France[9] in 2014.

This school was a place where Decq was able to put her unique design philosophy into an educational context, fostering innovation and creative problem-solving in future architects.

[14] More than 20 years ago, she entered the field of design by creating a series of furniture, armchairs and tables for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris with the Editors Domeau & Peres.

Thus, the portfolios of serigraphs produced for the publisher Bernard Chauveau on the occasion of the realization of the Macro, the Frac Bretagne or the restaurant Phantom at the Opéra Garnier are graphic deconstructions of the elements of the projects; the same is true of the series of ALOD plates made in 2016.

“A Steely Gaze: Odile Decq Draws from Lyon’s Industrial Context to Project the Waterfront’s New Identity.” Architectural Record, Building types study n.948.

Schwitalla, Ursula, Itsuko Hasegawa, Nili Portugali, Donna Blagg, Alison Kirkland, and Steven Lindberg.