Approach

Every project starts with a question: how will this space actually be used? The answer shapes everything that follows.

The method

01
Ask how it will be used
Before drawing, we find out who uses the space, when and for what. The brief you arrive with is a starting point, not the answer.
02
Decode your references
Bring images you like. We break them down together into the parts that actually appeal - the light, a material, a proportion, a feeling - so we both know what you are asking for.
03
Design the details
Storage where you need it, clear routes through the space, soft edges where hands and bodies meet it, layered light and tactile materials.
04
One fixed fee
Quoted after our first meeting and paid in stages.

In both of these, one question about use turned a single-purpose request into something that does two jobs, for about the same cost.

1 Before
On a community build in Gifu, Japan, the team was building a deck outside a ground-floor window.
2 What we asked
We asked the people who would use it what it was for: selling drinks through the window, which sits higher than the ground, and sitting outside.
3 What we did
So the deck became a place to gather. Rocks around it work as seats, and two hinged timber pieces flip up from the deck to support a board below the windowsill, turning it into a fold-out bar counter for serving drinks.

A team project: 20 students from Japan and Hong Kong, built in 11 days. Jasmine Hodgson coordinated the schedule and led one of the four teams.

1 Before
A non-profit therapy centre could only afford part of an office floor, so two new walls would divide it. The building owner needed direct access from the lift lobby to the rest of the floor, which would have cut the centre off from the pantry.
2 What we asked
We asked how the centre would use the space day to day, and what it would lose without the pantry and its water point.
3 What we did
We suggested leaving an opening in the new wall, closed with a curtain. It cost about the same as a plain wall, the owner kept their route through, and the centre kept its pantry, which made the space far more useful day to day.