Eight years in, the practice had outgrown a borrowed corner of someone else's office. We took a quiet first-floor apartment in Ganjoni and rebuilt it as a working studio — drawing room, library, sample wall, and a lounge clients can actually sit in.
The brief was a sentence: design it the way we'd design for a client. No prototypes, no temporary fixes — every surface had to be something we'd specify into a paying brief.
We kept the apartment shell intact and worked at the level of finish — terracotta-toned plaster on the long wall, oiled oak millwork running the full length, brass detailing at the joints. The reception arch is a continuation of the wall, not a separate piece of joinery.
Material samples we've used on real projects line one wall, indexed and labelled. Clients touch them before they see drawings — the studio is the first conversation.
The studio opens not with a counter but with a moment — a bamboo by the doorframe, north light filtering through, a brass-edged table catching the brightness. The threshold sets the temperature for everything inside.
Clients don't sit at a boardroom table. They sit in linen-wrapped lounge chairs around a low oak table. Drawings come out of a flat-file when they're needed; the rest of the time, conversation leads.
The working studio sits behind the lounge, six desks ranged along the north window for indirect light. Drawings on screens, samples on the desks, materials on the wall — everything within arm reach.
A short library of reference and a tall wall of material samples — everything we've specified into completed projects, indexed by brief. When we propose a finish, we already know how it ages.
If you walk into a designer's own studio and it tells you nothing — turn around. This one tells you everything.