The practice
Est. 2009 · Zürich and Porto
A building is not a volume. It is the order in which its rooms arrive.
We begin every project with orientation, because it is the one decision that cannot be revised later. Materials follow from the site, openings are set out full-size in the finished structure, and each plan keeps one room with no assigned purpose.
The philosophy
Notes on method
Most of what we decide is invisible by the time a building is photographed.
Where we begin
We start at this scale: one joint, measured and drawn, before anything is called a building.
Architecture is the slowest medium we have. A drawing takes a week, a building takes four years, and the way it is understood takes a generation. We design for the last of those.
01
Before the plan
We visit the site twice, in different seasons, before anything is drawn.
02
The section
The drawing that decides a building is usually the one nobody publishes.
03
After handover
We return at five years and write down what the weather has kept.
Light is the only material we cannot specify.
Everything else arrives on a pallet with a datasheet. Light arrives on its own terms, at a different angle every month, and a plan that has not been tested against it is only a diagram. So we test: a card model, a single lamp, and the hour of the afternoon that is least forgiving.
The Spaces — select a room
A plan is a sequence of decisions about light.
01 / 05
Atrium
The full height of the house, held open so the weather can be read from every floor.
