HEMAA

Hemaa, the art of the agile project.

Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne, the brains behind Hemaa, place context at the center of their approach. Many architects of their generation would no doubt say the same. The originality of Hemaa lies not in this attention, but in the way it informs their architecture and influences the development of the project. The physical situation of the site is matched by the conceptual position of the proposal, which reconfigures, rethinks and reinvents the place through a series of questions that serve as a safeguard. What scale of building to fit into the context? What material expresses a local anchorage? How to amplify the use and keep a constructive quality? From the sum of these questions, an agile, flexible project emerges, dividing the program between different entities, different volumes. In this process of segmentation, the void takes on the importance of the full, the hollows, the interstices invite to inhabit the site as much as the built volumes. At the risk of being offside, Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne never hesitate to take a step to the side in order to make the unexpected happen. The specifications of the competition are reviewed in light of the site even before the first sketches. A careful examination of the regulations and the topography prepares the reconfiguration of the public space by the project. For Hemaa, the benefits of an operation are not limited to its parcel. It extends to its immediate environment, by the loosening of the vis-à-vis, the creation of squares, passages... In two words, the restitution of a public void by the private volumes.

Fragmentation is neither an artifice nor a crutch: it accompanies the quality of use. In housing programs, it leads to the reduction of the thickness of the building and favors the implementation of through apartments. In a school, the insertion of the program on a mode of the pavilion will leave views on the landscape and the possibility of implanting noues for the natural treatment of the infiltration of rainwater. After the mass plan, the constructive and material dimension questions again the context. What material would best fit into the project territory? Resolutely curious, Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne explore without dogmatism the range of environmental technical solutions - wood, stone, earth - which they mix with traditional solutions, having for sole strategy to put the right material in the right place. The learning required by each constructive mode extends the skills of the agency, reinforcing it in a technical field of action that it considers inseparable from the profession of architect.

For Hemaa, therefore, a good architect is a good builder. He is also, as we have seen, a composer who interprets the qualities and defects of a site to prolong its history. Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne know that one day their projects may be transformed and rather than wait for this evolution, they prepare and anticipate it, imagining arrangements that will extend their buildings. In yesterday’s project lies the project of tomorrow. As a builder, composer and craftsman, Hemaa will not hesitate to use the tricks of the trade to make a building invisible, or on the contrary, to make it appear larger than it is when it is necessary to «hold» the site. By drawing on the sophisticated artifices of the architectural discipline, Hemaa invests its architecture with a soft magic, with the well-being of all the inhabitants of a city in mind.

Interview with Charles Hesters and Pierre Martin-Saint-Etienne

What is your first common project?
Our graduation project! We met in Paris-Val-de-Seine and thought together about the development of a mixed-use program on the island of Puteaux, on the Seine. We wanted to set up housing on this site exclusively dedicated to sports activities, playing the mix card to the hilt. Housing and sports were intertwined in a megastructure to save land, which we had sought to voluntarily make floodable. It was the second part of the project, which was attached to accentuate the moving dimension of the landscape. According to the water level, depending on the season, the island was transformed into an archipelago or a platform. In winter, one lived facing the Seine, in summer, facing a garden, the changes of the landscape gave rhythm to daily life.

What is your first agency project?
After the unavoidable restructuring of apartments, it is a school group project, much more measured than our titanic diploma proposal! To access public projects, Hemaa is developing around various associations with more experienced agencies. As of 2018, in a context of unfavorable commissioning, we decided to apply with the Hesters- Oyon agency to public contracting competitions: a seasoned agency and an up-and- coming agency. Hesters Oyon taught us the mechanics of public commissioning, taught us the functional subtleties of school programs, and on our side we mastered new tools, and other ways of conceiving the project, around the notions of context and sustainability. The name Hemaa, composed of the first two letters of our names plus two vowels for «associated architects», emerged after a long search! It contains this idea of handover and continuity. It reflects our desire to set up an evolving structure, leaving the possibility of integrating other people over time, to pass the agency on to the next generation.

What is the common thread running through your production? Is there a Hemaa style?
We claim an attitude rather than a style. Our main characteristic lies in the relationship to the site, to the existing buildings, to define a void that will remain until the end of the project, and which relies heavily on the fragmentation of the built masses. Part of the contemporary architectural production diffuses an architecture that is difficult to understand for the general public, and introduces a scale that is too imposing in its context. We advocate instead a composition of volumes that adapts to the site by reducing its scale. The fragments of the project will lean against a gable, open up an alley, be placed in the axis of a street, etc. In fact, it is from the design stage that we discover these common threads.

What is your position on the construction economy?
We wish to develop a purified writing, which turns the back to a form of facadeism, in the sense of the exuberance of facades. To ask the technique to justify an artistic intention seems to us a strange thing! We don’t see this desire for simplicity as a criticism, but rather as the observation of a change of era. After the era of generosity and its almost baroque expressionism, an ecological and economic imperative seems to impose itself. On the one hand, the economy of the building sites is more held, and on the other, it seems difficult to invent things for the simple pleasure of drawing. We feel the need to justify our features in the sense of an economy of material, of energy sobriety. Any element built must have its utility.

How do you address environmental issues in your projects?
The climate emergency engages us, and we see it as an opportunity, especially in the variety of materials and construction systems — wood frame, millstone, adobe, etc. — that we use. Working with different geometries and techniques is a source of creativity and desire, which makes it possible to differentiate projects that are similar in their programs. On the other hand, the mono-material and in particular the all-concrete approach seems to us to be the surest way to unlearn the profession, because unfortunately, except for a few emblematic operations, the quality of execution is no longer there. The architect dresses up everything to hide the defects, and progressively loses his capacity to conceive assemblies. By requiring materials to be assembled, whatever they are — wood, prefabricated concrete, etc. —, the architect must redraw the elements, finds competences, and renews with qualified companies.

Which order do you dream of?
Up to now, we have mainly designed facilities. This type of program involves many atypical spaces, the buildings are never the same and the responses are less standardized than in housing and offices, even if we try to introduce a rationality into each intervention - by setting up gantries, for example, on our school in Normandy. Of course, an architect will want to confront all the programs, since each time it is a new learning experience. We are delighted to work on subjects as varied as a sports stand or a conservatory, buildings that require other volumes, other spaces, and therefore generate other problems. Beyond the program, we are passionate about the quality of the site. We have just delivered a small school group in Normandy in a rural site, quite different from the dense urban contexts that were our daily routine until then. We were lucky enough to get a commission in a very beautiful place, and more than a museum or a church, which are considered the grail of architects, we dream of a commission in an exceptional site!