Begin with the section
Every project starts as a single drawn section through the site. Before plan, before elevation — we resolve how a body moves from ground to sky, and let the rest follow that cut.
Studio
Plinth is anarchitecturestudio working inmeasured permanence.
We design civic, cultural and residential structures held to a single discipline — one material, one section, one idea, drawn to the last junction.
- Established
- 2014
- Located
- Antwerp & Milan
- Discipline
- Architecture / Interiors
- Practice
- Civic — Cultural — Residential
Selected Works
006 projects / 2020—2024
- 01Carrara Reading RoomsBologna, ITCivic / Library2024
- 02The Long RefectoryGhent, BECultural / Adaptive reuse2023
- 03House on the ContourTicino, CHResidential2023
- 04Quarry CrematoriumPorto, PTCivic / Memorial2022
- 05Two Courtyard StudiosLyon, FRWorkspace2021
- 06Concrete AlmshouseUtrecht, NLResidential / Care2020
Approach
Six standing principles
The studio holds a fixed method across every commission. It is the reason a Plinth building reads the same whether it is a library in Bologna or a house on a Swiss contour.
One material, held
We commit to a primary material early and refuse to dilute it. Concrete, brick, or timber — the building is an argument for a substance, not a catalogue of finishes.
Light is structure
Daylight is treated as a load-bearing element. Apertures are sized by the hour they are meant to serve, not by the elevation they happen to land on.
Detail at full scale
Junctions are drawn at 1:1 and built as mock-ups on site. A threshold is not finished until you can stand inside it. Nothing is delegated to the moment of construction.
Build for the second century
We design for maintenance, weathering and reuse a hundred years out. The studio measures success in how gracefully a building accepts time, not in how it photographs on the day it opens.
Quiet, on purpose
Restraint is the brief we give ourselves. The work should recede behind the life it holds — a plinth, not a monument; a frame, not a gesture.
“A building owes the street it stands on a hundred years of good behaviour. Everything we draw is in service of that debt.”
Recognition
Selected — 2020 onward
- 2024Mies van der Rohe Award — ShortlistCarrara Reading Rooms
- 2024RIBA International Prize — LonglistCarrara Reading Rooms
- 2023Brick Award Europe — Winner, ReuseThe Long Refectory
- 2023Swiss Architecture Prize — NomineeHouse on the Contour
- 2022Iconic Award — Best of BestQuarry Crematorium
- 2021Plan Award — Office & WorkplaceTwo Courtyard Studios
- 2020ARC Award — Care & LivingConcrete Almshouse