Domus visits the Max Stirner studio to examine how drawing, model making, material research, and construction inform the practice's architectural work.

The studio occupies a converted commercial building where architects, designers, and collaborators work across two interconnected floors. At the centre is a workshop filled with models at different scales, material samples, construction fragments, and unfinished studies.

The environment offers little separation between designing and making.

A project drawing may sit beside a physical fragment of stone. A material test may lead to a change in the plan. A model may remain on a worktable for weeks while the team studies how light moves through a particular space.

For Stirner, these physical processes are not supplementary.

“They allow us to understand things that a drawing cannot always explain.”

The article follows the development of several projects through the studio, from initial sketches to material testing and construction documentation.

It also looks at the practice's relatively small structure. Rather than establishing separate departments for design, research, and production, the studio encourages these activities to overlap.

The resulting culture is deliberately direct.

Projects are discussed around tables. Models are handled continuously. Materials are compared in daylight. Decisions remain open for as long as they need to.

The studio is presented not as a finished identity but as a working environment—one that changes according to the projects being developed within it.