1999
A table, two architects.
Elena Varga establishes the practice in Copenhagen, beginning with small residential commissions.
We are architects, designers and careful observers. Different perspectives, brought together by an interest in how places make us feel.

FORMA began around a single table in Copenhagen. Elena Varga and a small group of collaborators shared the belief that good architecture grows from attention: to the site, to the brief and to the people who will live with the result.
Today, our four studios work as one practice. A project might begin with a conversation in London, a material study in Marrakech and a design review in Copenhagen. Each has a small, consistent team that stays close to the work from the first sketch to the last detail.
We do not have a house style. We have a way of working: listen carefully, ask useful questions, and make fewer decisions with greater care.
Meet the people behind the practice
We believe architecture begins with listening—to the climate, the landscape, the existing building and the people around it. The first task is to understand what is already there.
From that understanding, we look for a clear idea. One that can hold a project together as it moves through the practical demands of making a building.
We value materials that age well, rooms that can change and details that can be repaired. A project is complete when it is ready to begin its life with other people.
Climate, landscape and local knowledge are the first materials of a project. We begin by looking and listening.
Openings, depth and shade create different atmospheres throughout the day. Light is a building material in its own right.
We favour honest surfaces, repairable details and the skill of the people who make them.
The measure of a place is how comfortably people can inhabit it, adapt it and make it their own.
A building should become richer through use. Flexible rooms and enduring construction make space for its next chapter.
Elena Varga establishes the practice in Copenhagen, beginning with small residential commissions.

Elena Varga establishes the practice in Copenhagen, beginning with small residential commissions.

Our first international commission brings a new set of landscapes, climates and collaborators.

A second studio opens, bringing interior architecture into the centre of our work.

The hospitality team forms around a shared interest in the domestic scale of welcome.

The Marrakech studio opens under Samir El Mansouri, deepening our work with local materials.

Four connected studios, 84 projects imagined and realised, and a continuing conversation about what comes next.
Illustrative distinctions for the fictional FORMA practice.
18 Rue de la Liberté, Guéliz
40000 Marrakech, Morocco
Studio history, people, addresses and practice figures are fictional demonstration content.