(“Text as taken from the website”)
Loukas Yiacouvakis
He earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Montreal in 1990. That same year, he completed an internship with architect Melvin Charney, contributing to the urban study Le Faubourg St-Laurent. From 1991 to 1993, he pursued an internship with architect Mario Biocca, where he worked on the development of several urban habitats. In 1991, he also participated in the exhibition Montreal in Project: 10 Years of Urban Architecture, presented in Montreal, New York, and Paris under the curatorship of Melvin Charney. In 1994, he co-founded the YH2 workshop with Marie-Claude Hamelin.
Marie-Claude Hamelin
She earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Montreal in 1990. In 1991, she participated in Intermondiun, a course led by Daniel Libeskind in Italy, and completed an internship in architecture at the University of Israel. Earlier in her career, she was awarded Second Prize in the Habiter l’Espace competition in 1987 and in the SAQ competition in 1988. She also took part in the exhibition Montreal in Project: 10 Years of Urban Architecture, curated by Melvin Charney. In 1994, she co-founded the YH2 workshop with Loukas Yiacouvakis.
Practice Ideology
yh2 is an architectural design studio founded in 1994 by architects Marie-Claude Hamelin and Loukas Yiacouvakis. For yh2, architecture is the art of place, both the place in which the project is embedded and transformed, and the more intimate interior space it creates. The architectural project, the result of reflection focused on the landscape or the city, constitutes a tool for creating and transforming everyday life.
The agency aims to be a workshop for research and exploration of the architectural project, considered in its entirety. Particular attention is paid to the material, its spatial arrangement and its theatricality. Everything is carefully studied, from the architectural integration to the conceptual development of the project, from construction drawings to architectural details and from interior design to furniture and object design. The concept is developed with economy of means, each element having to prove necessary to the overall composition in order to be retained.
yh2 has deliberately chosen to focus on a limited number of projects. Led by the founding partners, the team devotes its full attention to its projects, the quality of which has received numerous awards over the years.
