01
Casa Terra
A rammed-earth house set into a slow fold of the Alentejo plain, organised around a courtyard that holds the only shade for a kilometre.
Cairn — Architecture studio · Lisbon & Copenhagen
We shape spacesthat belongto their place.
An architecture studio working in Portugal, Scandinavia, Japan and around the Mediterranean. Eighty-four buildings, and not one of them could stand anywhere else.
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We design where material, light, landscape and human life meet — and then we get out of the way.
Cairn was founded in Lisbon in 2012. We are twenty-two people across two studios, working on around eight projects a year, which is fewer than we could take and roughly the number we can do properly.
A cairn is a stack of stones that marks a place without claiming it. We have never found a better description of what a building should do.
Practice
- Founded 2012, Lisbon
- 22 people, two studios
- 84 completed projects
- Nine countries
Rua do Norte Apartment · Lisbon
Twelve projects, four countries, one method.
05 / 2023
Solace Retreat
Twenty-two rooms broken into eleven small buildings, sized and spaced so the hotel reads as a hamlet rather than a resort.
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Four principles. We have not needed a fifth.
- 01
Context before form
A site arrives with more instructions than any client can give. We spend the first month reading them.
- 02
Material with meaning
Every material is a decision about where it came from and how it will age. We choose the ones that age well.
- 03
Light as architecture
The cheapest material, and the most often wasted. A room's character is settled by where the sun lands at four.
- 04
Built for time
We design for a hundred years of use and at least two changes of mind. Generous structure, honest services.
Six services, usually three at a time.
- 01ArchitectureNew buildings, from a 62 m² apartment to an 11,400 m² workplace.
- 02Interior architectureThe building read from the inside out — structure, light, surface and the furniture that has to live with them.
- 03Master planningFrameworks for sites too big or too slow to be designed all at once.
- 04LandscapeGround, water and planting, designed at the same time as the building rather than after it.
- 05Adaptive reuseBuildings that already exist, given a second life that does not erase the first.
- 06Design consultationA short, paid, honest appointment for people who are not yet sure what they have.
Monolith Residence
The entrance is a 2.2-metre slot cut back into the hillside, with no view out. You turn a corner, the section opens to 5.6 metres, and the valley arrives all at once. It is the only moment of drama the house allows itself.
Six materials we keep coming back to.
Every project starts with a physical board like this one — samples on a table, moved around for a fortnight until the combination stops being an argument.
M-01
Board-marked concrete
Poured in seven lifts against rough-sawn larch. Warm grey at nine, almost pink at six.
M-02
Island limestone
Load-bearing, lime-washed on the seaward faces and left raw where the wind hits hardest.
M-03
European oak
Quarter-sawn, unfinished. Silvers outside, stays pale inside, repairable by anyone with a plane.
M-04
Anodised aluminium
One warm champagne tone, chosen to hold low northern sun rather than throw it back.
M-05
Undyed linen
Woven at a mill that has been running since 1931. Never dyed, never pressed.
M-06
Low-iron glass
Reeded on the west face to cut low sun without a blind. No tint, no film, no coating you can see.
Five stages. Eighteen months. One director throughout.
- 01
Discover
Read the site until it starts giving instructions.
4–8 weeks
- 02
Define
Turn a wish list into a brief that can be built.
3–5 weeks
- 03
Imagine
Three real options, modelled and costed, not one rendered dream.
6–10 weeks
- 04
Develop
Every junction drawn, every material named, nothing left to the site to invent.
16–28 weeks
- 05
Deliver
On site every week, and back a year later to see how it is wearing.
12–24 months
Thirteen years, measured.
13
Years of practice
Founded 2012 in Lisbon
84
Completed projects
Across nine countries
9
Countries built in
Europe, Japan, Morocco
2.4M
Square feet designed
223,000 m² to date
Recognition
- 2025Mies van der Rohe AwardNominated — Arca Cultural Centre
- 2024RIBA InternationalShortlist — House Among Pines
- 2023Premio ValmorWinner — Rua do Norte Apartment
- 2022AJ Retrofit AwardWinner — Foundry Yard
- 2021Dezeen AwardsLonglist — Monolith Residence
They spent four months arguing with us about the ground floor, and they were right. Three thousand people walk through this building every day who have no idea it is a cultural institution. That was never in our brief. It should have been.
Notes from the studio.
The quiet power of natural materials
A material is a decision about time. Some improve with weather and use; most are specified to resist both, and lose.
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The second life of industrial buildings
Retrofit has become the majority of our work. The hard part is not the structure — it is resisting the urge to make the old building comfortable everywhere.
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Let's shapewhat comes next.
Tell us about the site, the budget and the thing you are not sure about. We answer every enquiry ourselves, usually within two working days.
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Studio
Lisbon · Rua da Boavista 71, 2º
Coordinates
38°42'32"N 9°08'45"W