Listen
A month on site and at your table before anyone opens a drawing file.
MONO is an architecture practice in Basel. We take on four projects a year, which is fewer than we are asked to and as many as we can do properly.
We work in plan before we work in image. If a building cannot be explained with a pencil, we are not finished designing it.
A month on site and at your table before anyone opens a drawing file.
One plan, redrawn until every wall is doing a job. Usually thirty versions.
Timber models at 1:50, built in-house. You should be able to hold your building.
We are on site every week until the keys change hands, and for a year after.
“They talked us out of the house we asked for and into the one we needed. It is half the size and we use all of it.”
“The library has no sign. Everyone on the street knows where it is.”
“Three years, no surprises on the invoice. I did not know that was possible.”
Our fee is between eleven and fourteen per cent of the build cost, fixed at the end of the planning stage. We publish it because nobody else does.
Yes, with a local executive architect. Roughly half our work is abroad.
A house takes about three years from first meeting to moving in. We will not promise less.
Two a year. The rest of the time we would rather be building.