profile

The term Plasma comes from Classic Greek and means modeling, form, fabric, imagination, fiction.
In Physics, the Plasma State- or fourth state of matter- describes a unique condition of matter arising at a complex overlay of external forces. Plasma, a charged field of particles, conducts energy.

Plasma Studio is a leading emergent architecture and design practices with worldwide scope and outlook, engaging seamlessly a wide range of scales and types including furniture design, houses, hotels, cultural projects as well as landscape and urban planning.

Starting with a range of small but challenging refurbishment projects in London between 1999 and 2002, founding partners Eva Castro and Holger Kehne then completed various new buildings in the Italian Dolomites where they opened a studio location with partner Ulla Hell in 2002. Combining complex geometries with local materials through digital design and fabrication processes, the studio seeks to develop a new local vernacular that engages with the landscape.

Between 2003 and 2005 Plasma worked alongside some of the most famous architects and designers on one of the floors of Hotel Puerta America, Madrid. Plasma’s floor was one of the most challenging of the 16 radically different takes and published widely.

Recently Plasma has been involved in several large-scale mixed-use projects in China and is currently lead designer for the International Horticultural Expo in Xi’an with 37 ha and 12,000 sqm of projected buildings. The project, which is currently under construction and opens in 2011 to approx 200,000 visitors a day, enables Plasma to develop a holistic and integrated sustainable vision.

Plasma won the BD/Corus Young Architect of the Year Award and the Hot Dip Galvanising Award in 2002, the Next Generation Architects Award in 2007, and the Contract World Award in 2008. Additionally Plasma was selected for Architecture Record’s Design Vanguard 2004 and Arquitectura Viva’s Emergentes in 2007.
The practice's work has been published widely: examples are Phaidon’s 10x10_2 and Atlas of 21st Century Architecture, Taschen’s Architecture Now, the Architectural Review, A+U, Abitare, Architektur Aktuell, Icon, Mark, Wallpaper, the New York Times, the Financial Times, El Pais among many others.
Plasma Studio has had many international exhibitions and often developed a specific installation for each. Most important were: Solo exhibition at Deutsches Architekturzentrum, Berlin 2010, The Crumple Zone at Emerson Studios, London 2003; Fluxo Rosa at the Instituto Cultural de Michoacan, Morelia, Mexico 2004; Transpositional Practice- Solo exhibition at the Architectural Association, London 2005; 3G- Inaugural installation at ‘Extension gallery’, Chicago 2006; Solo exhibition Galleria di Architettura ‘come se’, Rome.

Form, space, experience
The studio is best known for its architectural use of form and geometry. Shifts, folds and bends create surface continuities that are never arbitrary but part of a consistent spatial and structural organisation. Space becomes expanded, new potentials arise, new experiences abound. A reduced palette of materials and colors with minimal clean detailing is used in order to let dynamic ephemeral events, such as light changes, reflections and people’s movements happen and be noticed.

Programme, organization, performance
As importantly, each project is geared towards maximizing space, performance and value through highly creative, open minded and skilful work processes. Starting with a careful analysis of the site and the brief, the studio develops together with the client a thorough framework of the contrains, objectives and potentials. Tangible and intangible parameters, such as material, light, structure, budget, usage patterns, atmosphere, weathering etc are all equally processed as determining forces.

Technology, sustainability, collaboration
The spirit and techniques of inclusiveness, collaboration, life-cycle engineering and full sustainability are guided by the academic research of both partners at the Architectural Association and its collaboration with leading consultants such as Buro Happold and Arup. Working on the limits of current computer-aided design tools, sophisticated environmental analysis software and parametric relational modelling, Plasma is contributing to a more transparent, complex and interactive development process that connects designers, clients, consultants and fabricators at once.

- Young Architect of the Year Award 2002
- International HotDip Glavanizing Award 2002
- Next Generation Architects Award 2008
- ContractWorld Award 2009
- Europe 40 under 40 2009
i- Cityscape Award- highly commended 2009
- Wallpaper* Design Award 2011

'Engaging Topographies' by Douglas Spencer

'Digital generation' by Kieran Long