HABITABLE studio
DESIGN / ARCHITECTURE / CITYinfo@habitable.studio
t. (+1) 530 507 8896


PHILOSOPHY

Economy · Ecology · Elegance

A habitable space is one that changes just as our lives change.

HABITABLE Studio designs transformable environments across scales — from a single piece of furniture to an urban block — for living, working, and playing. Every project is guided by precise proportions, meticulous materiality, and a deep attention to light.

Small things make a big impact.

DESIGN SERVICES

 Spatial Transformation
Joyful Spaces
Adaptable Furniture Design Consultation 
     ARCHITECTURE / ART / URBAN DESIGN
“Marta’s expertise of maximizing small spaces is without compare.” Jay Marroquin, client.
FOUNDER



“Small is not only beautiful, small implies experimentation, ecology, economy, efficiency, and intimacy. Small things make a big impact!”

MARTA RODRIGUEZ

Neuroarchitecture Researcher · Design Consultant
marta@habitable.studio

A chair and a city are not as different as they seem. Both are environments that either support human life or work against it. Designing across that full range — from a single object to an urban block — is what I do, and what I find endlessly interesting.

I started my career at OMA / Rem Koolhaas in Rotterdam, on the team that won the international competition for the New Court Rothschild Bank in London. Back in Madrid, I ran my own practice winning several public building competitions, while collaborating with Lahoz Lopez Architects on schools and hospitals.

In 2008 I began a research path that took me to Tokyo — funded by the Spanish Ministry of Innovation — then to UC Berkeley as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Japanese Studies, and to Sciences Po in Paris as a Visiting Fellow, where I co-led a seminar on Japanese urbanism with sociologist Adrian Favell. That research became my PhD, specializing in Japanese architecture and French design, reviewed by scholars from Japan and France. In 2017 I was Visiting Professor at TU Graz in Austria on an Erasmus+ grant.

In 2014 I joined the University of Houston as an Assistant Professor, tenured since 2020. In 2020 I founded HABITABLE Studio — a research-driven design practice. The work moves between scales: from the Ludens Prototype (an international competition in Japan exploring play and spatial freedom), to the Living Chair (an urban furniture landscape crafted from recycled materials), to the Pinocchio Children's Library in Italy (a world that unfolds like origami), to collective housing proposals for San Francisco, Oakland, and Amsterdam. The common thread is transformability — designing for how life actually changes.

I also founded Habitable City, a research and editorial platform with contributions from scholars at UC Berkeley, Rice, UT Austin, Harvard GSD, and others. In 2021 I published a book on Charlotte Perriand and Kazuyo Sejima.

My writing and design work have appeared in Metropolis, TAD, AV Proyectos, Pasajes Arquitectura y Crítica, and Cover, with a chapter published in Thames & Hudson's Architecture: The Whole Story. Presented at conferences across the US, Europe, Korea, and Japan. A piece invited by Harvard GSD is coming in 2026.

I am interested in design research, spatial innovation, and the future of how we design environments — from objects to cities — around the way people actually live.


HABITABLE TEAM

+  Marta Rodriguez, PhD
Founder & Principal - Professor, Author, and Urban Researcher.

+ Michael LindemannArchitectural Designer.

+ Collaborators since 2008:
 Lené Fourie, Alejandra Velazquez, Dijana Handanovic, Tuan Mai, Ghazal Saliman, Ingrid Selse, Emine Canak, Eirik Erstad, Marta de las Heras, Alejandro Sanz, Rafael Ureña, Natalia Varela.


HABITABLE studio
 DESIGN / ARCHITECTURE / CITYinfo@habitable.studio
t. (+1) 530 507 8896



PUBLICATIONS



MEDIA
Instagram
Linkedin

Habitable City
Promoting a more egalitarian, connected, safe, and LIVABLE city    
Subtle Revolution
 SMALL is not only beautiful but sustainable and has enabled architectural subtle revolution beyond borders and times.


LET’S TALK!
info@habitable.studio t. (+1) 530 507 8896

HABITABLE

DESIGN/ ARCHITECTURE/ CITY




TRANSFORMABLE HOUSING


Transformable Housing is a project that aims to increase density in San Francisco while maintaining the character of the city. Negotiable spaces and tiny apartments can be lived in independently or become an addition to different units, creating an incremental and adaptable system of living. 

A variety of apartment dimensions and living experiences allow the entire project to be like a playful transformable system, with endless possibilities of association. 

Full project...
Collective Housing
San Francisco, CA (2024-25)

Increasing density in San Francisco, while maintaining its character. Joyful micro-living.  





BAI-BAI FURNITURE: 
CO-WORKING SPACE


Bai-Bai Furniture offers a place to work, create, and collaborate; allows people to connect socially thanks to its organic shape. 

It is an “infinite” and sinuous co-working table, whose modular condition makes it affordable while allowing countless configurations for working in small or large groups. 

Playful curtains make moments of privacy possible. Bai-Bai configures inspiring workspaces in coffee shops, Montessori schools, libraries, and hybrid offices. 

Full project...
Habitable Furniture (2022-23)

Our modular furniture makes living more fun and working more creative.




CASA FONJAY


“In renovating our 1940 shotgun house in East Downtown, we reached out to multiple architects. After conversations and on-site visits by 5 or more of them, we went with Marta. This was based on the feeling that she understood the scope of our project, that this was an old house built in the 40s, and that it would need a lot of work. We felt she was genuine but more than anything, she brought a PASSION to our project that not a single other architect had. At one point, I was like ‘Is she moving in with us’ with her intimate knowledge of our goals and excitement for the project. I would beg people to reach out and talk to her. She thinks different (...)”

Jay Marroquin, client, Houston, TX, 2021. Full testimony on LinkedIn

Full project...
Home Transformation
Houston (2021-23)

Expansion and renovation of a shotgun house in Houston.

 


H-SHELVES


H-Shelves is a ludic design that creates, configures, reinvents, and qualifies space. Inspired by the Japanese Tokonoma, it is a structure in which items for artistic appreciation, including ikebana flower arrangements, are displayed.

7 modules, each with different dimensions, offer endless possibilities for creative combinations. They serve as kitchen space, a living room area, or co-working furniture; dividing a room or connecting and configuring an intimate atmosphere.

Full project...
Habitable Furniture (2020-21)

modular + adaptable + transformable + multifunctional + made of sustainable wood + easy to move + sold independently or as a set




LUDENS PROTOTYPE


A pipe and a curtain allow for the joys of life, a private retreat for creatures to enjoy. Living is playing in the garden, the Eden of Pleasure, where all can freely participate in the delights of the new age: a life of art.

This prototype is a novel structure, where performance becomes joy and a simple piece of fabric indulges the hidden desires of the Ludens of the 2020s, unbound from traditional architecture.
Full project...

House of the Future
Japan (2020)

The 47th NISSHIN KOGYO Architectural Competition “Living upon the PLAY”




URBAN BIOMBO  


Urban Biombo is a mobile modular prototype that allows the inhabitant to define and redefine their space to accommodate all aspects of contemporary living and working.

Urban Biombo is a new “equipment” suitable for a house, an office, a loft, a warehouse, a clothing boutique, or a bookshop. Its dynamic quality creates multiple lively possibilities and configurations: to work, play, exhibit, investigate, rest, or create.

Full project...
Habitable Furniture (2019)

Reinventing De Messina’s Study of St. Jerome

“Take your pleasure seriously.” Charles Eames




ADAPTABLE HOUSING


The entire project utilizes modular systems and prefabrication, which makes it economically wise at the same time creates interactive boundaries. It is a flexible and adaptable system that can be built in phases according to the dweller’s needs as well as urban conditions.

Most of the apartments have more than one entrance. Different access points allow for flexibility of the dwellings: renting rooms, living independently from the family nucleus, or adapting to changes in the familial environment.

Full project...

Collective Housing
Oakland (2020-22)

Exploring the regenerative capacities of living together. Joyful micro-living.  




FAN HOME


The "Fan Home" project embodies an innovative micro-home concept that redefines small-scale living. This prefabricated system allows individuals to easily purchase and install units in their gardens, creating self-contained homes without the need for sewage connections. The design features walls made of unfolding curtains. Inside, a compact layout unfolds like a travel trunk, revealing a versatile living space with areas defined by fabric walls that adjust like a fan.

Full project...
Joyful Micro Living (2024)

MICRO-HOME International Architectural Competition by Buildner.



LIVING CHAIR


Like human calligraphy, the Living Chair flows with its surroundings, inspired by nature’s adaptable organisms. Chairs embrace or turn away, shaping a seating experience of movement and stillness. Its smooth, satin-finished skeleton, crafted from recycled resin composite, provides strength and adaptability, while the woven fungal mycelium skin flexes like tissue around bone, adjusting to pressure and movement. 
Urban Furniture (2025)

The Architect’s Chair, International Competition (BUILDNER).




DOUBLE CITY


Double City, located in Amsterdam, on the north side of the IJ River, acts as a pivotal point between industrial and residential areas. The project proposes to reinvent the concept of a traditional or pre-industrial city. Urban renewal is based on combining habitation, innovation, and production to reinvigorate the fabric of the “European City.”

A ‘Living Lab’ model that showcases a circular economy. Experimentation, research, and innovation are implemented; merging human working time and lifetime in an optimistic way.

Full project...
Collective Housing
Amsterdam (2018)

Reinventing the Productive City in Amsterdam.
EUROPAN 14 competition, "Productive Cities"




URBAN CURTAINS

  
Soft and adaptable wall prototypes that shape versatile, multifunctional environments.

How can we design spaces to flexibly evolve with human life? Habitable Curtains revolutionize the way we envision space, offering adaptability to both divide and connect.

Prototype 01 - Room Divider: A fluid wall providing intimacy for extra-small spaces and extra-large environments.

Full project...
Fluid Wall
Configurable (2023)

Experimental phase.





PINOCCHIO LIBRARY


The Children’s Library creates an experiential environment that unfolds like origami from the paper factory. Two doors open to a world of imagination and wonder, like a big, secret garden.

The library and the paths that intertwine around, through, over, and under it intersect and create multiple long promenades to discover through reading, learning, and playing in versatile spaces. Noise zones are arranged to the south, while reading areas are to the north, taking advantage of natural light.

Full project...
Children's Library
Collodi, Italy (2018)

A World of Imagination and Wonder.





NEW COURT ROTHSCHILD BANK


“The structure’s form minimizes competition with its two historically prominent neighbors, establishing an urban connection through a series of stacked cubic volumes. at the street, the mass is lifted to allow pedestrian access through a glass lobby. The transparent enclosure reveals the medieval roads which border the base, visually connecting to the 400-year-old church on the opposing side of the site. structural steel and dark glazing define the external aesthetic.” (designboom)

Full project...
Office Building
London, England (2005-2011)
AWARD: First Prize

Rothschild Headquarters
Competition Team - Marta Rodriguez © OMA

Published in Arquitectura Viva - AV Monographs 178-179: Rem Koolhaas OMA/AMO 2000-2015






LUCIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCH CENTER


“The famous architect Rafael Moneo qualifies the project by Marta Rodriguez as realistic. (…) Rafael Moneo praised the lightness of the project and its attention to the context and the site, which can be understood ‘in continues relationship with the park’.”

Full project...
Academic Building
Valladolid, Spain (2010)
AWARD: First Prize

University Research Center  University of Valladolid  

PRESS: El Norte de Castilla newspaper.





RESEARCH UNIVERSITY FACILITY


The building uses the slope of the site to offer different levels of interaction with the body: the same slope creates areas to sit down outside, to work inside, or to sit down in the auditorium.

New ecologies that attempt to overcome the opposition between nature and culture.

Full project...
Academic Building
Valladolid, Spain (2009)
AWARD: Second Prize

Building for Science  University of Valladolid

PRESS: “Joung Talents” Public El Norte de Castilla newspaper.





UNIVERSITY LIBRARY


The building has a continuity of nature (air, light, and vegetation), which acts as a pergola. By constructing a multiple-level building there will be a continued opportunity to be connected to the landscape.

 The building frees people, offering multiple choices to the users.

Full project...
Academic Building
Madrid, Spain (2005-2007)
UPM Library
AWARD: First Prize





AFFORDABLE HOUSING 


The entire project utilizes modular systems and prefabrication, making it economically wise and creating interactive boundaries. It is a flexible and adaptable system that can be built in phases according to the dweller’s needs as well as urban conditions.


Living Together in Container Homes
A luxurious experience within affordable construction, Haina, Dominican Republic (2022)

Full project...
Collective Housing
Cordoba, Spain (2007)
AWARD: Second Prize

Affordable Housing for Young People in Cordaba. Joyful micro-living.  




SCHOOLS & HOSPITALS


“Marta is, in a few words, a fabulous architect; imaginative, effective, and decisive. In her collaborative works, she immediately stands out for her ability to bring original approaches to the design process, easily finding simple solutions to complex problems. I had the pleasure of working with her years ago. From those shared projects with her, my admiration remains for her innate talent, intelligence, intuition, deep knowledge of Architecture, and love for our profession.”

Luis Marcos Díaz, Director de proyectos en GA MMA, 2022. See full testimony on LinkedIn

Full project...
Academic Building
Cuenca, Spain (2006-09)
AWARD: First Prize

“San Gil Abad” Primary School in Cuenca  
Competition team - Marta Rodriguez @ Lahoz Lopez





CORDOBA CONGRESS CENTER


“Functioning as a programmatic sandwich, the upper lower layers fold or converge to respond to different interior/exterior pressures along its length: separating to accommodate the conference hall and auditorium; converging to define the hotel lobby; lifting to allow Miraflores Park and the street to continue through to the specified site. To the south, the main volumes of the conference center and auditorium project from the slab; a ramp between the two marks the formal entrance to the complex.” 

Full project...
Multifunctional Building
Cordoba, Spain (2001-04)

Project Development Team - Marta Rodriguez © OMA




LET’S TALK!
info@habitable.studio 
t. (+1) 530 507 8896