A studio of
makers, not brands.
Obsidian Build Group is an integrated practice of 340 architects, engineers and craftspeople working from studios in New York, Lagos, Zürich and Dubai. We design in the same room we build in.
We build
slowly.
We were founded in 1998 on the belief that architecture is only as honest as the hands that build it. Twenty-six years later, that belief still shapes every drawing that leaves our studio. Nothing is drawn that has not first been made in the workshop, held, weighed, and understood.
Speed is not our metric. Precision is. A commission with Obsidian begins with eighteen months in the studio — mapping site, climate, material, ritual — before a single foundation stone is cut. We refuse projects that cannot afford this discipline.
The result is a body of work — forty-two completed commissions across residential, cultural and civic scales — that shares no signature style, only a signature standard. Our buildings do not announce themselves. They accumulate weight, silently, over decades.
We are principals-led. Every project is drawn by a partner, from first sketch to final handover. There are no juniors on the pen. There are no renders sold as promises. There is only the drawing, the model, the mock-up, and the finished stone.
How the studio
holds itself.
Draw what you can build.
Every detail that leaves the studio has been mocked up in the workshop. If we cannot make it by hand at 1:1, we do not draw it at 1:100.
Material before form.
We begin with the quarry, the mill, the foundry — not the render. Form is the honest consequence of a material's grain, weight and behaviour over a hundred winters.
Restraint is a discipline.
The strongest gesture on a building is often the one we remove. We measure our work in what we chose not to add.
The client is a co-author.
We do not present three options. We present one considered position and refine it with the people who will live inside it for fifty years.
A quiet
accumulation.
Founded in Newark
Three architects and a structural engineer open a 90-square-metre studio above an industrial forge. The first commission is a public library annex in Trenton, delivered under budget and eleven days early.
Master Craft division
Formal integration of joinery, stonework and metal fabrication in-house. The studio begins drawing details at 1:1 rather than 1:5.
First tower — Meridian I
A 187-metre residential tower in Lower Manhattan completes during the financial crisis, on schedule, and becomes the studio's calling card.
Lagos studio opens
West-African practice founded with sixteen architects. Focus on civic and cultural work across Lagos, Accra and Abidjan.
Carbon-negative pledge
The practice commits to net-negative embodied carbon on all commissions above 5,000 sqm by 2028. Timber and stone re-enter the material library.
Four studios, 340 people
New York, Lagos, Zürich and Dubai. Forty-two completed commissions across four continents. Still one drawing room.
Under
one roof.
Architecture, engineering and craft share the same drawing room, the same coffee, and the same final review. Coordination is not a phase; it is a room.
Kept on
the shelf.
Begin a
conversation.
We accept between six and eight new commissions each year. First conversations are held in person, in the studio, over one long afternoon.