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