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.
