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 can support human life.

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



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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

New Court Rothschild Bank
London, UK (2005-2011)




OMA's design for New Court is the fourth iteration of Rothschild's London headquarters, all of them built on the increasingly dense and architecturally rich site on St. Swithin's Lane, a narrow medieval alley in the heart of the City.




The building offers the opportunity to reinstate a visual connection between St. Swithin's Lane and St. Stephen's Walbrook. Instead of competing as accidental neighbors, the church and New Court forms a twinned urban ensemble, an affinity reinforced by the proportional similarity of their towers. 

The new building unites all of Rothschild's London staff in one location for the first time in decades. A reading room and space for displaying the family's archive ground the new building in the bank's illustrious history.”

The central cube has a distinctive repeated pattern of structural steel columns embedded in the façade. At street level, the entire cube is lifted to create generous pedestrian access to the tall glass lobby and a covered forecourt that opens a visual passage to St. Stephen's Walbrook and its churchyard - creating a surprising moment of transparency in the otherwise constrained opacity of the medieval streetscape. 

New Court is made up of a central cube of ten efficient and flexible open-plan office floors - which facilitate views over St. Stephen's and the surrounding City - linked to four adjoining annexes, with meeting rooms, enclosed offices, vertical circulation, reception areas, and a staff cafe and gym. The top of this central cube features a landscaped roof garden with outdoor meeting areas. This in turn is overlooked by an adjacent Sky Pavilion - a small tower with three double-height storeys peering out over the city - which houses meeting and dining rooms and a multifunctional panorama room with extraordinary and unfamiliar views across the City, including St. Paul's Cathedral. © OMA

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









Competition Team - Marta Rodriguez © OMA

CONTACT
info@habitable.studio 
t. (+1) 530 507 8896