Founded by Michel Da Costa Goncalves and Amrita Mahindroo, DROO Architecture is a RIBA and RICS Award-winning practice operating worldwide from our offices in London, Paris and Melbourne. Da Costa Mahindroo, or DROO takes a wholistic approach to design from the object to the urban, each project is a culmination of the complex network of conditions, which are distilled into a singular poetic statement, which valorises its context – both physical and intellectual.
Find out more about our latest contributions as well as latest publications about our work on the Press and Publications sections.
DROO Architecture actively explore the implications of macro-economics and emerging technologies on aesthetic and formal undercurrents in contemporary design, and aims to situate this discourse in the environment through tangible, user oriented design solutions. Our research explores the evolution of historical spatial and formal typologies as they are put the tests of contemporary markets, environmental extremes and societal/cultural differences. We seek to generate new layers of richness in our work, by perpetually challenging ‘type’ in architecture, and subsequently allowing us to speculate on the evolution of the future city as an amalgam of these individual architectural products. Each project is at once a tailored solution to the design problem at hand, but also apart of our over arching body of research which engages the community and is an armature for social and environmental agency.
Our work spans Europe, North America, Australia and South East Asia with a strong research focus on cities. We’re committed to developing and promoting architectural creativity to the world. We take part in leading-edge events such as the London Design Festival and our work has been recognised by the Custerion Award, FEIDAD awards, Wallpaper* Design awards, FX awards and in international publications including Architect’s Journal (AJ), RIBA Journal and Blueprint. Our work has also been exhibited at London’s prestigious Royal Academy of the Arts. In addition, we have been teaching at esteemed architectural schools and bodies across the world since 2004, including at the Architectural Association.
DROO’s Harikleia Karamali speaks at THE PLAN event set in Venice alongside the delayed Architecture Biennale 2021. The panel discussion part of PERSPECTIVE EUROPE 2021 forum reflects on how the pandemic may have affected architecture and ways to practice it. During this long pause we have been keen to preserve the iterative quality of our…
We are delighted to announce the promotion of Harikleia Karamali to associate. Harikleia has been an integral part of our team for the last 5 years. She brings immense creativity and energy to her work and has shown strong leadership of the London office. She has led a number of significant projects including Fulham Town…
Through contemporary re-writing of the primative ‘hut’ the house in its simplest and most recognizable expression becomes the founding element of our proposal. Seeking out ways to create a sense of Individuality within the collective housing that for reasons of economy of scale often results in the loss of social appropriation. Our treehouses within the…
The renowned architecture firm, DROO Architecture, has a holistic approach to design is what has distinguished them from other firms and in this case, they present a unique structure that communicates who they are as a team. https://www.construcolor.com/post/london-s-paper-house — Read on http://www.construcolor.com/
Amrita Mahindroo‘s interview with the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne reflects on her work leading to the creation of DROO which has been been recognised for its innovation and creativity, most recently winning the Architecture Master Prize 2020 in the Residential Multi-Unit category. Full interview here. “The most…
MODERN THEATRES 1950-2020 which includes a contribution by DROO Architects’ director Michel da Costa Gonçalves is a fantastic book edited by David Staples and published by Routledge. Michel explores today’s perception of the Opera Bastille in light of its very political inception and using his past experience designing cultural venues such as the Onassis Opera…
Research through design, our Song Do Library proposal. Designed with both a sense of material frugality and experiential monumentality, our proposal sees the Library as a dynamic movement of ideas within an ecosystem defining by two interacting environments: the central garden and main library’s stepped agora. Symbolic and active, the engineered timber shell closes…
Thank you to FRAME Magazine for inviting DROO’s director Amrita Mahindroo to be a part of FRAME AWARD Jury. Its fantastic to see so many exciting projects coming up from across the world. After so many months of restrictions we are all itching to see an exhibition, go to a restaurant or work in collective…
Bringing people back to London and showing how the city remains an open global place is an exciting ambition for post lock down. Despite the additional burdens created by the pandemic and Brexit, we are happy to assist foreign investment into the UK. Working for example with the great hospitality brand, Touriste, our cross borders experience…
Reflecting on the current small retail surplus in light of designing XXL ones in Asia and other thoughts informing our cyclical proposal for FAIRE. We’ve seen a progressive crisis of space emerge over the last 10 years around retail space in the city; this has very suddenly become a crisis of all types of commercial…
We try to design to exemplify in its richest way the ability to use new technologies to re-think how to better our built environment, how to use less material, build with better materials, prolong the life our buildings and cities and aim always to reduce our footprint right down to the typological decisions we make…
Our society is premised on this need for moving in a direction and for the better part of the 20th and early 21st century this has been based on ‘more’. For the past decade we have been seeking answers on how to grow in a more cyclical way, by building and reinventing what we have, addressing typology,…
Floating, hovering, suspended gardens… How to make a garden fly? At the heart of our Paris Gateway project, our suspended garden aimed to resolve conflicting constraints. The very valuable « ground plane » needed to be used for transport whilst other underground infrastructures occupying the whole site made it impossible to plant. Simultaneously, the elevated…
Spatial sequencing Without theological commentary intended, our answer for a new Russian Orthodox Church was the literal sequencing of its spatial DNA. Simultaneously as an answer to the trapezoidal site and its oddness in regards to contemporary design, we choose to slice and displace an archetypal model to create a new species. The gradient translation…
Born of our investigations into material reuse, the Castle Lane was at his inception a opportunity to study of a special brick aggregate. Giving a second life to the demolished building, we studied the solution composed wit aggregate panels made of the crushed brick from the site itself. One of expectations when working in an…
The Fractal Tree is the manifestation of geometrical play stemming from the growth logic of tree branches. Operating as a city sculpture and a sustainable device, the timber structure transforms itself and its environment over the course of the day. Both metaphor and abstraction of its natural source, DROO’s fractal tree is an active abstraction…
