Studio

A studio built around what is left unbuilt.

Six architects, one draughting table we all still fight over, and a rule that no project leaves the studio with a line that does not earn its place.

Form & Void opened in a single Al Quoz warehouse in 2014, founded by two architects who had spent a decade drawing towers they did not believe in. They wanted to build less, and mean more — to treat the empty half of a plan as seriously as the built half.

Ten years later the warehouse is still the studio, the fights over the drawing table have not stopped, and the practice has grown to six people and sixty-four completed projects. The rule has not changed: draw everything, then take away until what is left is exact.

What we hold to

Nothing decorative

If an element only decorates, it comes off the drawing. Everything that stays is doing structural, spatial, or light-carrying work.

Concrete tells the truth

We leave materials as they are — board-marked concrete, raw steel, unglazed stone. A surface should admit how it was made.

Light is drawn, not added

Daylight is planned into a building from the first sketch, never fixed later with lamps. Every opening is placed for an hour of the day.

The client co-authors

You know how you live better than we do. We draw; you argue; the building is better for the argument. That is the whole method.

The studio

Maryam Al Awadhi

Principal · Co-founder

Tarek Hourani