Stone Court
Low-rise, high-density housing around a shared ground
Structure, daylight, and the ground floor.
A studio organised around three questions: what carries the building, where the light comes from, and what happens in the first three metres above the pavement.
Selected work (6)Position
We design buildings that can be repaired, re-used and misused for a long time.
The studio works from the section outward. Structure, daylight and circulation are settled before surface, and each project is tested as a physical model before it is drawn in three dimensions. What follows from that method is usually a plainer building than the brief expected, and a more useful one.
Our work is currently organised as design research: a set of typological studies that examine housing density, civic daylight, industrial reuse, workplace section and the covered public room. Each study states its argument, its construction and its limits.
Selected work
Full index →
Terraced Workplace
Fields of work
- Multi-Family HousingBlock structure, shared ground, dual-aspect planning and long-life fabric.
- Civic & CulturalBuildings that must be legible from the street and adaptable inside it.
- Adaptive ReuseWorking with existing frames through subtraction, reversibility and repair.
- WorkplaceSection-led daylight, exposed servicing and circulation as social space.
- Private ResidentialRoom-based plans, thick thresholds and restrained groundwork.
- Mixed Use & Public RealmCovered ground, adjustable edges and infrastructure for public life.
Site & Context
Walking, measuring, photographing, and reading the constraints that already exist before proposing anything.
Brief & Programme
Turning requirements into spatial terms: areas, adjacencies, orientation, and what the project is actually for.
Concept
A small number of clearly different options, tested in section and model, each with a stated argument.
Schematic Design
One direction resolved: plan, section, structure and envelope brought into agreement.
Design Development
Materials, junctions and performance developed with consultants; the drawings become buildable.
Documentation
The full construction set, specified so that the intent survives procurement.
Consents & Coordination
Statutory submissions and consultant coordination, managed as design work rather than administration.
On Site
Regular attendance, review of samples and mock-ups, and resolution of what the drawings could not anticipate.
Notes from the studio
All notes →The case for the thick wall
Thin, layered construction is efficient on a spreadsheet and fragile in a building's second half-century. A note on mass, repair and the things a wall can do when it is allowed to be deep.
Ground before object
Most of what a building gives a city happens in its first three metres. A note on why the studio starts every project at the ground plane and works upward.
Drawing as an instrument, not an output
On why the studio still sections everything by hand before it is modelled, and what gets lost when the first act of design is a render.
New projects
Tell us about the site before you tell us about the building.
Start a project