Studio-Method is an independent, research-based architecture and design practice founded by Riel Bessai and Pedro Daniel Pantaleone in Rotterdam (NL).
We are committed to rethinking the built environment in response to today’s environmental crises. By working with reused materials, we explore new methods, aesthetics, and forms of collective well-being across architectural interventions, installations, speculative designs, objects, and products.
Central to our practice is Contingent Design, a methodology that challenges the systems of control, power, and extraction embedded in contemporary design. Our work adapts design to place and context, using what is sufficient and locally available. This approach is process-driven, combining co-creation, appropriation, and reconfiguration of found or repurposed materials.
Above all, Contingent Design is a social practice that brings people together around the politics and economies of care, maintenance, and repair.
Research / Publications
2024, Designing with more-than-human temporalities, Design Research Society Conference 2024, https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2024/researchpapers/99/
2023, Fit for Purpose: Four considerations for how matter becomes material, Computing within LIMITS Conference, https://limits.pubpub.org/pub/l7i2kjaj/release/1
2022, Circular Composites: A Design Guide, OpenTU Delft, https://books.open.tudelft.nl/home/catalog/book/23
2021, Territory and Trans-gression: Alternative Models of Resilience in Post-exploitation Zones, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment TU/Delft
2021, Objectivization of Identity in the Contemporary Age and DIfferentialism: Towards a New Teleology, Argus TU/Delft
Exhibitions
2024, Pop-up Gallery VrIJland, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2023, Introduction to Dutch Design Week 2024, Eindhoven, Netherlands
2023, Design United 2024, Eindhoven, NL
2023, Relics, Rituals, and Debris - Krater, Amsterdam, Netherlands
2022, Get Set for Global Wellbeing - Dutch Design Week, Klokgebouw, Eindhoven, Netherlands
2022, Salone Del Mobile - Isola Design Gallery, Isola District - Milan, Italy
2022, Hydromax 2022 - IPKW Arnhem, Foreland Studios - Arnhem, Netherlands
2022, Duck-off, Time is the New Space, Rotterdam, Netherlands
2021, Archiprix 2022 - Keilepand 4M - Rotterdam, Netherlands
2021, Entangled Ecologies - Dutch Design Week, 4TU - Eindhoven, Netherlands
2021, Sustainability at Scale - Dutch Design Week, Van Berlo - Eindhoven, Netherlands
2021, Objet D’Art - The Holy Art Gallery - London, United Kingdom
Awards
2023, Talent Development Grant Scheme, Stimuleringsfonds Creative Industries NL, https://talent.stimuleringsfonds.nl/en/pedro_daniel_pantaleone
2022, Experiment Grant Scheme, Stimuleringsfond Creative Industries NL
2021, Best Graduation Award (Unito), Industrial Design Engineering, TU/Delft
2021, Archiprix selection 2022 Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment selection, TU/Delft