Mark Hemel

section 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. 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". He aims for "biological intelligence" to be introduced in the architecture and planning professions. Hemel is working on a book in which the term "biological intelligence" will be introduced.

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. During this year he travelled 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 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.