Designing a brand is like designing a home. This time around we had the pleasure of being the client and working with the talented team @shiftwalk.studio in developing the identity that speaks to the work we do at STUDY.
Check out their latest feature on @thebrandidentity for this great collaboration.
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This corner has become a regular landing spot in the studio.
Light moves in low across the new table, shifting through the afternoon, catching the grain, softening the room around it. Conversations tend to gather here. Less formal, more open, sometimes drifting away from work entirely.
The textile work by @marisvanvlack hangs just above, adding another layer of texture and materiality to the room.
As spring leans toward summer, it’s where the studio begins to slow.
Designing here starts with the basics. Where the sun lands, where shade is needed, and how the house can open without overexposing itself. Rooflines extend to create cover, openings are placed with care, and the material palette carries the warmth and mineral tone of the surrounding ground.
Set among saguaros and desert scrub, this house is arranged as a series of low forms that stay close to the land. Each volume balances shelter and outlook, with views moving between the garden, the mountains, and the wide desert sky.
In a landscape this strong, architecture has to know when to hold back.
Meet Daniel, co-founder and principal at STUDY.
Dan has an inventor’s eye and a natural tendency to tinker.
Outside the studio, he is often in the mountains, on a backcountry ski trip or walking a site, paying close attention to how things are formed and how they hold up over time, often returning with photographs from along the way.
That curiosity carries into his work at STUDY. A lasting interest in natural materials and construction shapes how he approaches design, with close attention to place, process, and the lives each project is built around.
Spring light at the San Francisco studio.
STUDY began in California, and this office still feels like an anchor for the practice. Even with a nationally based team, it’s one of the places where the work comes back together, where conversations continue, details get resolved, and projects move forward.
Some doors mark a beginning. Others remind you where things started.
This guest house anchors the property with a calm, grounded presence, nestled among oak trees and set along a gentle creek. Designed with transparency in mind, it dissolves the boundary between inside and out, allowing light to move freely through the space.
Delicate wood fins filter light and introduce a sense of rhythm, while a thin metal roof floats lightly above. Stone elements tie the structure to the landscape, grounding it in its surroundings. A place shaped for pause and retreat.
Framing underway at Spitting Cave.
Building along this stretch of coastline demands careful coordination between structure and exposure. The orientation of each opening is set early, long before glazing is installed. Even at this stage, the house is already clear. It steps into the slope, turns toward the wind, and frames the Pacific.
Walking the site recently, it was clear how much of the experience is resolved in the bones.
We spent a few days in Montana at the end of January for our winter retreat, a shift in scale from the city and its usual pace.
Between ski runs, long dinners, and a few competitive matches on the court, we opened the doors to our Bozeman office and celebrated Raechel’s birthday. From the slopes, we even caught sight of our Winterfell project sitting in the snow.
It was the kind of time together that lingers once you’re home again. A change of landscape, and a little more clarity.
We opened our Bozeman office at the end of January, while the team was in town for our winter retreat.
Montana has shaped so much of our recent work. Over time, returning to this landscape began to feel familiar in the best way. Establishing a more permanent presence feels less like an expansion and more like a continuation of something that was already underway.
Thank you to everyone who helped bring the space together, and to those who continue to build with us in this part of the world.
Time spent with Azul Macaubas in Brazil.
Formed from a lake bed compressed and turned on its side millions of years ago, this dense quartzite is defined by movement. The quarry chases a saturated indigo vein — 3 meters wide at its widest and a slender ribbon at its thinnest — stretching and pulsating across 25 kilometers.
Encountering it at the quarry changes your understanding of scale and variation. What appears subtle in a sample becomes dramatic in full slabs. Finish alters its character. Polished reveals depth. Sawn softens it. Water intensifies its tone.
Just as important is how it is selected and used. Choosing each block requires patience and restraint, planning what is used now and what is held for later, ensuring the material is honored from source to installation.
Meet Ryan, a designer at STUDY.
Outside the studio, he spends time painting. Watercolor gives him space to slow down, to look without solving anything, and to stay with an image long enough for it to change.
That way of working carries back into his design process. Paying attention, working in layers, and letting things reveal themselves over time. A parallel practice that sharpens how he sees, both on paper and in space.
Early construction in Woodside, California.
Time on site is spent with formwork, rebar, and the underlying structure of the house. These are the moments where scale becomes legible and decisions move from drawings into the ground. Nothing finished, but everything beginning.
Working across architecture and interiors, being present at this stage helps us understand how the building meets the land, and how those early moves will carry through the life of the project.
