Christelle Avenier graduated from École d’architecture de Paris-Malaquais (Paris-Villemin), where she met her future partner, Miguel Cornejo. From her student years onward, she developed her professional path by alternating between positions at the office of Mathias Klotz in Santiago, Chile, Douglas Deremer Architect in San Francisco, as well as several architectural firms in Paris.

Together, they were awarded the Électra (EDF) scholarship in Valparaíso. In 2007, the practice gained access to public commissions after winning several competitions, notably for a daycare center commissioned by the Paris 20th arrondissement city hall and a social housing project for Élogie-Siemp, the social housing authority of the City of Paris.

The practice quickly distinguished itself, receiving the Europe’s Emerging “40 under 40” award, while the Rue Bonnet project in Clichy-la-Garenne won the “Architectural Review Emerging Architecture Awards.”

Several projects were shortlisted for the Équerre d’Argent, including the Les Lilas residence and daycare center in 2014, followed in 2019 by the 88-unit housing project in Pantin in the Housing category. The latter received the Brick Award in 2022 in the “Living Together” category. That same year, the practice was awarded the Housing Prize by the Académie d’Architecture and the Ordre des Architectes, while Christelle Avenier received the Prix Femme Architecte. She became a member of the Académie d’Architecture in 2024, the same year the Rue Dareau project in Paris 14 was nominated for the Équerre d’Argent.

The practice’s projects have been exhibited in Paris at the Pavillon de l’Arsenal, at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, the American Institute of Architects in New York, as well as in Vienna and Calgary, and have been presented at numerous international conferences and symposiums (TU Wien, RIBA, AIA New York, University of Calgary, and Venice Biennale). Alongside her architectural practice, Christelle Avenier has maintained an active teaching career: she has taught at the Technische Universität Wien, at ENSA Paris-Malaquais — where she now serves on the board of directors — at the ESA, and currently teaches at ENSA Nantes-Mauritius.

From Savoie, her native region, she may have inherited a determination that leads her “back to the fundamentals of materials,” a sense of responsibility toward communities expressed through a commitment to durability, and a natural inclination toward solidarity with craftspeople, contractors, and residents alike.

The practice develops projects in Toulouse, Lille, Nantes, and above all within the Greater Paris metropolitan area, including the Les Lilas residence co-designed with Chartier-Dalix, followed by a series of operations that engage with the complexities of Parisian urban conditions to create silhouettes synthesizing the vibrancy of their working-class neighborhoods, enhancing the human scale of their social purpose, and playfully extending the metaphor of inhabitation into every recess of their depth, as well as into the details of their façades and their lightweight, modular furnishings.

Hanif Kara OBE FREng is co-founder and Design Director of AKT II, the interdisciplinary engineering practice working across 50+ countries. With over 40 years’ experience, he is internationally recognised for advancing design-led engineering at the intersection of architecture, infrastructure and material innovation.

Kara is Professor in Practice at Harvard Graduate School of Design and has taught widely across leading schools of architecture in Europe, contributing to a generation of practitioners engaged in integrated design thinking.

His work has been recognised with over 400 design awards, alongside major honours including the OBE, the CTBUH Fazlur R Khan Lifetime Achievement Medal (2022), The London Design Medal (2023), The Soane Medal (2024), In 2026 hanif was featured in “Monoclocle100” a curated list 100 people, ideas, places shaping contemporary design, culture business and urban life.

A frequent author and sought-after judge, Kara brings a global perspective grounded in rigorous collaboration and a commitment to design excellence.

Oliver Wainwright is the architecture and design critic at the Guardian and a 2026 Loeb Fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. He trained as an architect, studying at the University of Cambridge and the Royal College of Art before working at the Mayor of London’s Architecture and Urbanism Unit, OMA/AMO in Rotterdam and Muf in London.

Wainwright has also written for the AR on a broad range of subjects, from the courtyards in the sky in Uzbekistan designed by Ofeliia Aidinova in the AR issue on universal housing, to temples to the automobile in Bahrain in the AR Roads issue. In the Korea issue, Wainwright wrote about the touristification of the DMZ between North and South Korea – his first book, Inside North Korea, was published by Taschen in 2018.