Hervé Ellena, was born in 1970, awarded a engineer diploma by the Ecole Centrale of Lyon in 1994. Stéphanie Mehl, was born in 1974. They met at the school of architecture Paris-Malaquais in 1995. During their studies they won the competition of The Fondation de France / BMW for a multimodal car park in Paris under the Rotunda of La Villette, a tribute to the French architect Claude Nicolas Ledoux. Graduated, they won a special mention at the EuropanDOM Architectural competition in the tropical French island La Reunion, in 1999, with their proposal - " Paysage d'usages " focusing on the small scale life stories of its inhabitants.
They open their first office in 2000. Their first project - a road maintenance technical center and a "gendarmerie" – all made of wood for the motorway company "Autoroutes du Sud de la France", on A89, in Corrèze, was nominated in 2002 for the "première œuvre" award by Le Moniteur.
Their project demonstrated that the features required by this kind of program could show architectural qualities. This first project was to lead to others on the A89 motorway, ending in the gorgeous Puy de Dôme in 2006.
After numerous projects - mainly equipments, offices, and a first project in the field of health - they created the EllenaMehl / LNAMEL architectural office at the end of 2006 to assert their identity and their architectural convictions, highlighted by remarquable projects like the one for the Institut de France or their finalist project for Europan 8 in La Courneuve.
Hervé Ellena and Stéphanie Mehl have shown, their ability to propose an always creative, open reflection. They like to compare any architectural project as a toy box, at the same time a receptacle and a promise of a multitude of stories and tales.