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Architecture, interiors and exhibition design

Rooms that hold the light

We design buildings, interiors and exhibitions for people who notice the way a room feels before they notice how it looks.

Rooms that hold the light

About the studio

Every project starts on site, with a notebook and a long walk. It ends when the light falls the way we drew it, when a visitor slows down without being asked to, and when a building still makes sense after the photographers have gone home.

About the studio
Architect drawing on a paper plan

What we do

Four practices under one roof, sharing the same drawings, models and long table.

Public buildings, houses and cultural venues, from the first site visit to the last snag list. We stay on the project through construction.

Homes, hotels and workplaces where every material is chosen for how it ages, sounds and feels under the hand.

Permanent galleries and temporary shows for museums and foundations: layout, cases, lighting, graphics and the paths visitors take.

Furniture and lighting made in small runs with workshops in Portugal and Norway, often drawn first for one of our buildings.

How a project unfolds

Five stages, one team

The same people carry a project from the first conversation to the opening night. Scroll to walk through it.

  1. 01

    Listen

    We spend the first weeks asking questions: who uses the place, at what hour, and what they want to feel there.

  2. 02

    Survey

    Light studies in every season, soil and structure surveys, and a measured drawing of everything we keep.

  3. 03

    Sketch

    Dozens of quick options on paper, then three we believe in, presented side by side with honest costs.

  4. 04

    Model

    Card and timber models at 1:50, then full-size mock-ups of the details people will touch every day.

  5. 05

    Build

    We stay on site through construction and come back a year after handover to see how the place is used.

Restoration

From render to the real thing

Drag across the image to compare the competition render of Casa do Vale with the house as it stands today.

Render, 2021 Built, 2024 Render, 2021 Built, 2024

Casa do Vale, Douro valley

64

Buildings completed since 2009

23

Exhibitions designed for museums

11

National and European awards

38

Architects, makers and curators

Exhibitions

On view and coming up

27 May 2025

Painting

The Long Battle

History paintings of war, shown at the scale they were made to be seen.

  • 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

13 Dec 2025

Painting

Salon Rouge

Ninety portraits hung frame to frame on deep red walls, as in a nineteenth-century salon.

  • 10:00 AM - 6:00 PM

14 Sep 2026

Painting

Weight of Light

Dutch still lifes hung in a single dim room, each lit by one narrow beam.

  • 11:00 AM - 6:00 PM

05 Oct 2026

Painting

Paper Cities

Contemporary paintings of imagined cities, hung on freestanding walls you walk between like streets.

  • 10:00 AM - 7:00 PM

From the collection

Wander the wall

Works we lit, hung or built cases for. Drag in any direction, or use the arrow keys, and open a work for its label.

Still life with tulips c. 1670, oil on panel
Pasture at the forest edge 19th century, oil on canvas
Stool No. 3 2024, oak
Paper City, no. 4 2022, acrylic on canvas
The charge 18th century, oil on canvas
Study in drapery 19th century, oil on board
Blue weather 2021, oil on linen
Reading lesson 19th century, oil on canvas
Yellow field 2023, acrylic
Reading chair 2025, wool and ash
Signal 2020, mixed media
Night pour 2022, resin
Drag to explore

Clients and partners

In their words

They moved one wall by forty centimetres and the whole gallery started to breathe. Visitors now stay twice as long in the room nobody used to enter.
Ingrid Solberg Director, Kunsthall Vika

Trusted by museums, foundations and families

  • Kunsthall Vika
  • Nordlys Hotels
  • Museu do Rio
  • Lumen Press
  • Brann & Co.
  • Fundação Maré

Journal

Notes from the long table

Start a project

Tell us about the site, the collection or the question. We reply to every message within two working days.

Write to the studio