SMA+Design

Builds

Work in progress

A running record of ordinary buildings going up, photographed on site as the work happens. Mostly small plots, mostly mid-construction, no styling and no finished photographs. Each frame carries the city and the plot size it belongs to. These are not the projects in the archive. They are the everyday work the archive is built out of, and the record is added to as the sites move.

12 photographs · updated September 2026

A grey plastered room with a large square opening onto a brick boundary wall, a welded reinforcement cage standing on the floor.
PlasterDHA, Lahore, 5 marla

Plaster on, and a single large opening carrying the whole room. What it looks at is the boundary wall, so the brick becomes part of the view whether you planned for it or not.

A dark brick room lit only by two punched openings in the far wall, a bamboo pole lying across the earth floor.
BrickworkDHA, Lahore, 5 marla

Two openings punched through the brick and nothing else in the room yet. At this stage a house is only its structure and its holes, which is when the daylight is easiest to judge.

A wide view of an interior with full-height glazing to a garden on the left and a tall narrow slot window opening to a side court on the right.
GlazingDHA, Lahore, 5 marla

Full-height glazing on one side and a tall slot on the other, pulling light down the flank of the plan where a window would otherwise face a wall.

A double-height wall clad in split-face stone, grazed by light from a concealed cove above, with a worker at the right-hand edge.
FinishesDHA, Lahore, 5 marla

A double-height wall in split-face stone, lit from a cove at the head so the light rakes across it and picks up every course. Still being worked on.

An open plot with brick footings laid in excavated trenches, spoil heaped alongside, and the blank flank wall of a neighbouring house behind.
FoundationsDHA, Lahore, 5 marla

Footings going in, the plan appearing at full size for the first time. Behind it stands the blank flank of the neighbour, which is the condition the whole design has to answer.

An interior nearing completion with a large glazed opening onto greenery, an unglazed opening to a courtyard beyond, and building materials still on the floor.
FinishesLahore, 5 marla

Glazing in on one side, the other still open to the courtyard. Two openings and green on the other side of both, which is most of what this house was after.

A terrace under construction with bamboo and steel scaffolding lashed with rope, looking out over a quiet street lined with trees.
PlasterLahore, 5 marla

Bamboo lashed to steel. This is what the scaffolding on most sites here is actually made of, and it goes up and comes down faster than anything you could hire.

A tall plastered shaft in black and white, a hard diagonal of sunlight falling down one wall from an opening above.
PlasterLahore, 5 marla

One high opening doing all the work in a space with no external wall available to it. It costs nothing beyond the decision to put it there.

An interior corner where a smooth white plastered wall meets a raw grey concrete surface, lit from a slot above.
PlasterLahore, 5 marla

Raw concrete left as it came out of the shutter, running into plaster. What stays raw is decided long before anyone reaches this stage.

A concrete roof slab with the lines of the next floor set out in single courses of brick, a brick shell standing behind it.
Slab and set-outSialkot, 10 marla

The plan set out at full size, one brick course high, before anything is built up. This is the cheapest moment there will ever be to move a wall.

Looking down into a brick-lined shaft cut through the middle of a house under construction, reinforcement bars standing in a concrete edge beam.
BrickworkSialkot, 10 marla

A shaft cut down through the middle of the plan, so the rooms at the centre of the house get daylight and moving air rather than a light fitting.

A narrow passage between two brick walls, one a boundary wall, the other the flank of a house under construction with door openings framed in timber.
BrickworkSialkot, 10 marla

The side gap, with the boundary wall on one hand and the flank of the house on the other. Openings are framed in timber as the brickwork goes up around them.

There is an essay behind this record, on what a five marla plot asks for and on the decisions that shape a house while they are still cheap to make.

Read Five Marla→See the finished work→