Northform Studio designs buildings and interiors with restraint, daylight and honest material. Small practice, one director per project, drawings resolved to the joint.
Practice
A small practice by choice. Fewer projects, more attention, and the person who drew it on site when it is built.
Engagements
Three ways in. Start small to find out what the site will allow, grow the brief with concept design, or appoint the studio for the whole build.
For clients testing whether a site, a brief and a budget can carry each other.
From R24 000
Most Requested
For clients with a site and a brief who want the shape of the project resolved.
From R48 000
For clients who are building. Concept through to the last site visit.
From R96 000
Indicative fees shown for the purposes of this design concept. Real scope and fees would be set per project.
Approach
Three commitments that shape every drawing that leaves the studio.
Orientation, wind and daylight are studied before a single line is drawn, so the building works with the site instead of against it.
Brick, concrete, timber and steel used as themselves. We choose finishes that age into a building rather than off it.
Junctions are drawn at full size before they are built. Most of what makes a room feel calm is decided at the joint.
Projects
Four studies drawn for this concept. Every project shown here is invented.
Private Residence
A four bedroom home stepped down a steep south facing slope, so every room keeps a view and a source of morning light.
Workspace
Six maker studios inserted into the shell of a former brickworks, lit from the south by a repaired sawtooth roof.
Civic
A reading pavilion for a public garden. One thin roof plane, four columns, and a bench that runs the full length.
Interiors
A warehouse floor reworked as one open dwelling, with services gathered into a single freestanding timber core.
Short notes from the studio on how buildings get decided.
The short answer is permission to stop.
Most of the money lost on a building is lost before anyone breaks ground, on a scheme the site was never going to allow. A few weeks of testing is the cheapest part of the whole exercise.
Detail is not decoration applied at the end.
A wall meets a floor in one of about four ways, and the choice sets the shadow, the tolerance and the cost. Deciding it early is what keeps the elevation honest once it is built.
Orientation costs nothing and changes everything.
A room facing the right way needs less glass, less shading and less heating for the rest of its life. It is the one improvement that gets cheaper the earlier you make it.
Enquiries
Tell us about the site and the brief. We reply to every enquiry within two working days.
Site First