FORM / STUDIO

FORM is an independentarchitecture and interiorstudio based in Belgium.

A pale card model showing a tilted roof, a long stair and pale green water.
Card model, 1:50, for a house with a tilted roof.
A pencil drawing of a building plan on paper, with pens and a rule on a wooden desk.
Plan drawn by hand before anything is modelled.

Approach

Scale

We keep our work small on purpose: houses, conversions, small hotels and single rooms. At this size, a single pair of hands can hold the whole building in mind, and the same person who draws a junction can visit the site where it is being built.

Context

Our work is mostly in Flanders and Brussels, in places with long memories and tight planning rules. We treat those rules as design information. A ridge limit or a 5.2-metre plot usually gives a project its idea.

Renovation

More than half of our work is on existing buildings. Our first move is always to keep as much as we can, which is the most effective thing an architect can do about carbon, and often about character too.

Materials

Three or four to a project. We pick them on site, in the weather they will have to live in, and we prefer materials that can be cleaned, patched or oiled by the people who use them.

Interiors

We do not hand over a shell for someone else to fill. Plan, structure, joinery and lighting are drawn together, which is why many of our details look as if they could not be otherwise.

Collaboration

We work with a small circle of engineers, joiners and landscape designers, and we bring them in during the first month rather than the last. Clients get our direct numbers and meet the people drawing their building.

Principles

01

Place

Start with what already exists.

Before anything is drawn, we spend time on the site: at different hours, in bad weather, from the neighbour’s side of the fence. Most of a project’s best ideas have already been lying around.

02

Light

Use daylight as a material.

We position openings for where light will land, not for how they look on the facade. Sections come early for this reason, and we build a card model of any room we are unsure of.

03

Material

Choose fewer materials, more carefully.

Three or four per project, usually. Fewer junctions, fewer suppliers and fewer things that can go wrong. And materials that wear in instead of wearing out.

04

Longevity

Design for use and ageing rather than novelty.

The real test is a building in its twentieth year, repaired by someone we have never met. We detail with that person in mind, and we prefer the option that can be taken apart.

Scale

Twelve projects, drawn to one scale.

Illustrative drawings. Ground floor footprints.

At the desk

Hands sketching a plan on paper on a timber desk, seen from above.
A sectional timber and card model of a stepped house against a black background.
Sectional model. A section you can put your head into.
Layered bands of brick, timber and stone samples stacked as a wall.
Brick, timber and stone offcuts kept for comparison.

The studio

FORM is deliberately small and, as a fictional practice, deliberately anonymous. There are no invented biographies here, only the work the studio would need to do.

  • Architecture
  • Interior Architecture
  • Technical Design
  • Visualisation

Concept Project — FORM Studio is a fictional architecture practice created as a portfolio demonstration.