About

Studio-Method is a research-based architecture and design practice founded by Riel Bessai and Pedro Daniel Pantaleone. Our studio is based on a radical commitment to a more sustainable built environment in response to the urgent environmental crises which demand a rethinking of our collective material culture. We approach this challenge by considering how designing with reused materials can unlock new methods, aesthetics, and forms of collective wellbeing. We explore this challenge through a range of work, from architectural interventions to spatial installations, speculative designs, objects, and products.

A central theme in our work involves transcending the traditional perception of waste as a mere technical problem. To this end, we have defined Contingent Design as an alternative methodology that challenges the value systems of control, power, and extraction inherent to (post-)modern design. Contingent design adapts design to environment, considering what is sufficient and locally available as a necessary generative input in the design process. Thus, Contingent Design is a process-oriented working method of adaptation, appropriation, and reconfiguration of common material resources. Finally, Contingent Design is a convivial activity, bringing people together around processes of care-taking and repair.