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Mark Hemel

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Hemel in 2010

Mark Hemel (born 1966 in Emmen, Netherlands)[1] is a Dutch architect and designer, and co-founder (with Barbara Kuit) of the Amsterdam-based architectural practice Information Based Architecture. He is best known as an architect of the Canton Tower in Guangzhou.

Personal views

According to Hemel's discussion with Humans of Architecture, his focus is on "global architecture". His main interest being the expression and development of contemporary culture. In his view, architecture can play an important and positive role in shedding light on potential routes global culture could take.[2]

Hemel stated, "the next generation of planners, architects and designers will have to get used to thinking big, so making reference to big environmental challenges and major expected world population dynamics. Architects in particular will find themselves less and less powerful. We therefore have to focus on making our work more "information based" or we might get side-lined and more and more irrelevant".[2]

His solution is to strive for 'TRUE' integration of the different aspects of design and planning, through different scales, starting with small steps at the time. He pleads for getting rid of the modern valuation-system of measuring everything in terms of money, efficiency and functionality, and instead calls for a more holistic valuation system that weighs small yet effective and strategic influences against the more materialistic approaches. Hemel proclaims that "recent decades of science have shown us that we should not ignore the small, and that we should focus on the interrelationship of seemingly independent things. The world is a global world: everything in it, including the people, form one holistic whole. We should go beyond Modernism's mayor fault: splitting problems into sub-sets in order to solve them independently, in the process destroying the interrelationship."[1]

He therefore pleads for "biological intelligence" to be introduced in the architecture and planning professions. Hemel is currently working on a book in which the term "biological intelligence" will be introduced.[3]

Influences

Hemel was educated by American theorist Jeffrey Kipnis and UK architect Zaha Hadid as well as Dutch architects Herman Herzberger and Carel Weeber. He was particularly influenced by the books of Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene 1976), Kevin Kelly (Out of Control 1995), Ilya Prigogine (Order Out of Chaos 1984), and Douglas Hofstadter (Gödel, Escher, Bach). After his post graduate studies at the Architectural Association in London, Mark began teaching at the AA.

Besides an interest for everything that evolved or subconsciously developed, Mark also takes interest in mathematics and geometry. During his studies in Delft, he pursued mathematical courses in chaos theory. The reason for his interest in chaos theory is that it seems to explain why Modernism is doomed to lead to disaster, and that the alternative "synthesis and integration" bears much more prospect.

"In contemporary architecture you see lots of forms that refer to nothing. And indeed, we want to make designs that are more 'informed'."[4]

Hemel was chosen as one of Design-Build Network's "New Young Architects to Watch for 2010".[5]

Biography

Mark Hemel was born in 1966 in Emmen, Netherlands. Hemel graduated in 1993 from the Delft University of Technology, as well as the Architectural Association in the Graduate Design Program in the year 1996. After his studies in the Netherlands, he received a scholarship for a 1-year research project in Africa and Asia from the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.[6] During this year he traveled through Ghana, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, India, and Indonesia concentrating his research on organic city-developments. Beside this he also became keen to vernacular tactics to cope with the environmental circumstances which he came across in Africa and Asia. His studies focused on the Dogon people of Mali, the cities of Djenne, the people on the island of Nias, Indonesia, and the southern temple cities of India.

Hemel worked and lived the first 9 years (1995–2003) of his professional life in London, United Kingdom. In 2003 he returned to the Netherlands to set up his practice in Amsterdam.

Hemel is a tutor and educator. He has been a Unit-master at the Architectural Association in London from 1999 to 2008, and design-tutor of the post-graduate Environment and Energy program at the AA in London, since 2002. Over these years, he experimented with developing performance-based architectural projects. In 2003 Hemel was awarded the RIBA tutor prize.

Hemel has been active in multi-disciplinary groups, trying to renew attention to the architectural debate. He is a member of the do-group; an international inter-disciplinary research-group and participates in the Performing Arts Labs; a UK-based architectural research group sponsored by the United Kingdom's National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts.

Hemel is registered as an architect at the Stichting Bureau Architectenregister, The Hague, Netherlands.

Professional practice

Hemel co-founded the firm 'Information Based Architecture' together with his partner Barbara Kuit in 1998 while they were still based in London. The office is called "information based" in order to clearly break with the common state of architecture at that time that was producing modernist architects. In 2003, they moved their office to Amsterdam while they currently focus their work Europe, China and Africa. They have won several high-profile competitions, the highest achievement being the design for the 600 metres (2,000 ft) tall Canton Tower which has recently been opened to the public. Hemel's attitude to architectural work can best be explained by the following statement: "architecture should be valued only after the physical form of architecture has come into being, and we should get away of valuing architecture on the basis of conceptual text. Architecture cannot fully be photographed, nor be fully described in text, and cannot be fully captured in an image."

Publications and reference material

Hemel and Kuit's work has been published and exhibited widely. In 2002 they were shortlisted for the Young Architects of the Year Award in the United Kingdom. They have received support by the Dutch Department of Trade and Industry and received several encouragement grants by the Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture.

Hemel is the author of a book entitled Supermodel, the making of the world's tallest TV tower (2011).

References

  1. ^ a b "Mark Hemel / Dutch Architects".
  2. ^ a b "In Dialogue with MARK HEMEL". Human of Architecture. 28 August 2019. Retrieved 9 August 2023.
  3. ^ "010 publishers". www.010.nl. Archived from the original on 22 August 2010. Retrieved 17 January 2022.
  4. ^ Vollaard, Lotte Haagsma en Piet (11 October 2010). "Six years building the tallest TV tower in the world – ArchiNed". Archined.nl. Retrieved 28 July 2018.
  5. ^ "10 for 2010 - Design Build Network". Archived from the original on 18 January 2011. Retrieved 12 October 2010.
  6. ^ "Mark Hemel + Barbara Kuit partners of IBA Information Based Architecture". Archived from the original on 13 July 2011. Retrieved 14 October 2010.
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