Story of Design

The forgotten nature is the forgotten soul. Nature has always been there for us and before us. Inspired by Mexico and beyond, Elias Kalach and Teddy Nanes of Vertebral shared their thoughtful approach to bringing craftsmanship and nature into the built environment to enhance timeless dialogue between humans and mother earth. 

Benni Allan - the founding director of London-based EBBA architects - is always inquisitive and searching for adventure. As a young and emerging studio, EBBA is highly influenced by what Allan is drawn to most, such as nature, creativity, and the process of making.

SET is a Rome-based architects who believe in essential architecture. With numerous prizes and awards, the studio has developed a room where the critical approach to environmental sustainability, technologies, and materials are bound together to generate new forms of living that enhance the relationship between the natural and the artificial.

Iterare Arquitectos is a Valencia-based architectural design studio led by Pedro Ponce and Rubén Gutiérrez, that approaches a project without any preconceptions or manifest. In this Story of Design, we conversed with Rubén, he shared the story behind the studio, the design approach, and about injecting Mediterranean soul into their projects.

Think about objects beyond one that is static, but as one that can be moved and move a larger sum. We conversed with Roberto Requejo from Imaginary Objects, a Bangkok-based architectural design studio, sharing about objects beyond its common iteration, but as a medium to pursue transformative environments aiming to elevate the ordinary.

Victor B. Ortiz Architecture is a multidisciplinary studio based in New York and Sao Paulo that focuses on architecting places that blend structure and nature. He believes that understanding the ties in between each element in architecture is key to understanding and fully realizing the dynamic between human beings and the environment. 

Julius Taminiau on exploring the interconnectivity between architecture and art, music, nature, philosophy, and other disciplines and how understanding these connections better will only enrich the architectural practice and experience.

Mauricio Ceballos X Architects’s main driver is to design and offer creative/responsible solutions that emphasize on environmental and social approaches. They believe in the power of collaboration, embracing different visions, and bringing everyone's thinking to the table in order to create a shared vision - as Mauricio further shared his story on this series of Story of Design. 

Irgen Salianji from Architects for Urbanity shares his views on how cities are changing, some urban typologies worth exploring, and showcasing a city's identity in this interview with The Design Story.

Ruben Teodoro from Colectivo Warehouse talks about their participatory architecture practice and focus on horizontal learning. In such collaborative action, an architect's role is a mediator who manages expectations, is transparent with the whole process, and wears many hats in effort to become closer with each stakeholder, all to ensure a cohesive, successful result.

British designer Rhys Ellis found his way to blur the lines between waste and beauty through organic shapes in wearables, all to raise awareness of environmental issues to the public eye.

Realrich Sjarief shares about sharpening both creative and critical minds when it comes to practicing, appreciating, and understanding a work of architecture and also about the importance of nurturing micro-communities to encourage learning together.

A manual or guide to becoming a better, more responsible, more impactful designer.

DesignAware is an interdisciplinary studio that creates designs that are livable, usable, accessible, and responsible. Led by Takbir Fatima and Abeer Fatima, DesignAware does not approach design as a traditional practice but rather as a movement where "many hands and many minds come together creating an impact that is greater than the sum of its parts". 

Estudio Cavernas is a social architecture non-profit organization started by Juan and Yago Cuevas Duran, committed to achieving sustainable construction in marginalized communities to ensure a process and outcome that reflects and supports the local culture, way of living and environment. This interview discusses how empowering the construction can be to the community in those conflict areas.

Led by Angela Delorenzo Arancibia and Cristóbal Valenzuela Haeussler, LAND Arquitectos is an architectural firm committed to innovation in the design of projects that enhance the relationship between the built, natural, and social environments. Currently they are leading a watershed planning project at the North Patagonian Lakes - a project called Chile Lagos Limpios - and we are conversing with A...

"Why aim for permanence when changes are inevitable in almost every aspect of our lives?" is the question Stephanie Larassati from Atelier Larassati keeps on asking herself. Her practice has largely involved temporary structures and temporary architecture that react quickly to current conditions, but temporary does not mean it cannot have a long lasting impact on society.

kogaa is a brno-based architectural design studio that has put sustainability and slow development at the core since its establishment in 2015. what it means by sustainability and slow development is that the studio does not only speaks about reusing but also on behaving responsibly towards the environment. including befriending potential challenges, especially in aging buildings and demolitions. 

Everybody deserves access to good quality design and it is what Caukin Studio is trying to achieve. With numerous design and construction projects worldwide, Caukin aims to reach out and offer better built environment and better impact to local communities around the world.

Naturbeads is a company that produces natural and biodegradable microbeads produced from renewable and sustainable resources in form of cellulose. These natural microbeads aim to replace plastic microbeads that are currently being used in a lot of cosmetic and personal care products, paints, packaging, and many others. The company was co-founded by Janet Scott, Davide Mattia and Giovanna Laudisio.

Taller KEN is famous for creating playful design with social and cultural relevancy. A design that is playful not only makes a space iconic, but it also brings people together much easier because more and more people would want to somehow be connected to it.

Healing with Design. Paola Sakr is a multi-faceted Lebanese designer based in Beirut. Through her objects that she makes from the heart, she hopes to pass on messages, frequencies, and energies to other people so that they can resonate with it.

Hugo Chan's research-driven practice is often the is common tie in adaptive architecture. Being an architect, a researcher, a writer and an educator all at the same time has made Hugo Chan find the need to dig deeper in the parallel fields he's working on: about how well could he apply the research into an actual building context; how important it is to see architecture and the role of a...

Kathryn Larsen is a bio-based designer or an architectural technologist whose works focused on seaweed or vernacular architecture. She is an advocate and one of the pioneers in using seaweed in the context of building materials. This interview will discuss how this seaweed thatching method is not a technique she invented herself, but rather an old method used hundreds of years ago that was lost al...

theMAAK, a design-led practice started by Ashleigh Killa and Max Melvill, focuses on building public spaces for social impact. Started with love and passion for people, they believe that public space making is the perfect vessel for collaboration, cultivating connection amongst people, and seeing them thrive.