A spatial practice for cultural institutions, hospitality, and private patrons. We build slowly, with materials that will weather, on plans that will outlast the brief.
Meridian Arc is a 17-person studio working at the unfashionable intersection of permanence, craft, and quiet ambition — across Europe and the Mediterranean.
The studio was founded in 2008 around three principles we still keep on the wall in Zürich: build to outlast the brief, choose materials that age well, and treat every drawing as if it will be redrawn by someone who hates us in forty years.
Our clients tend to be cultural institutions, second-generation hoteliers, and a small number of patient private patrons. We do not chase competitions; we lose them. The work we want — adaptive reuse, civic buildings, the slower kind of hospitality — finds its way to us.
Every project is designed to be photographed in fifty years, not five.
Stone, plaster, oak, brass — chosen for how they’ll look once they fail.
We remove three things from every plan before we sign it.
The site brief gets longer than the client brief. Always.
Museums, libraries, foundations, and the rare municipal commission that has time and budget to do it properly.
Boutique hotels, restaurants, and small resorts for owners who want the building to outlive the brand.
Industrial conversions, historic restorations, civic re-imaginings. The discipline we love most.
Three private commissions a year, ground-up or fully reworked, for clients who understand the timeline.
Districts, campuses, vineyards — where the building is the smallest part of the brief.
Stand-alone interior commissions, exhibition design, and the occasional one-off piece of furniture.
A 19th-century vineyard estate, returning to use as a 14-key inn after thirty years asleep. We are restoring the granite-and-lime fabric and adding two small new pavilions, set deep into the cork-oak treeline.
“They took six years to deliver our building. We gave them seven. The only people I have ever recommended without a single reservation.”
“They redrew the brief twice and the building three times. It was right.”
“We didn’t hire architects. We hired a long argument that ended in a building we love.”
“The library opened seventeen months late. I’d wait another seventeen for the same studio.”
Lisbon office. Adaptive reuse, cultural programmes.
Zürich office. Civic and institutional.
Joined in 2014, now leads the hospitality studio.
Site-led builds. Most often on a scaffold.
Operations, finance, and the long calendar.
Tableware, lighting, soft objects.
Materials research and tender drawings.
Adaptive reuse and the studio model shop.
A six-week reading of your site, brief, and budget — before you commit to anything else.
Full architectural service, concept to completion. The way we do almost everything.
Stand-alone interior architecture for buildings we did not build ourselves. Selective.
For estates, foundations, and families with a multi-decade building programme.
We accept three to five new commissions a year. We respond to every serious enquiry within fourteen days, in writing, from a partner.