THE STUDIO
Architecture and design studio. Phase 4, DHA, Lahore. In practice since 2012.
SMA+Design
Architecture · Design
Lahore, Pakistan
Light, Space, and Mass. The three forces through which a building earns its place.
SMA+Design is an architecture and design studio in Phase 4, DHA Lahore. Founded by Salman Mirza in 2013, the studio works on homes, commercial spaces, and industrial buildings. The attention to detail stays the same whether the project is an 18,000 square foot house or a single piece of furniture.
Every project is developed in Revit from the first concept. Clients see realistic visualizations, not technical drawings, because it is unfair to ask someone to live in a building they cannot read on paper. Physical models are built. 3D prints are made at critical stages. If what gets built differs from what was drawn, the studio treats that as its own failure, not a normal part of construction.
The studio runs two teams side by side: a design team and a build team. This exists for one reason: so the detail designed in the studio is the detail that gets built.
LISTEN
Understand the brief beyond the brief. What does the client need that they have not said yet? What does the site demand? The project does not begin until these questions are answered.
MODEL
Every project is developed in Revit from the first concept. No loose sketches that tighten later. Precision from the first move. Problems that would appear on site are caught in the model instead.
SHOW
Clients see visualizations, not technical drawings. It is unfair to ask someone to inhabit a building they cannot read. Every design stage is shown, not decoded.
RESOLVE
Physical models and 3D prints are made at critical junctions. Not as presentation tools, but as thinking tools. The hand that builds a model finds problems the eye looking at a screen misses.
BUILD
The build team executes against the same level of detail the design team produced. Two parallel teams, one standard. The gap between drawing and building is treated as a failure of process, not an inevitability of construction.
