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

PUBLICATIONS

MEDIA

Instagram

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

Urban Biombo
Reinventing De Messina’s Study of St. Jerome (2019)

Urban Biombo is a portable modular habitable furniture prototype that configures a multifunctional space inside of an undefined space. It introduces the human scale into a large space, aspiring to eliminate the differences between architecture and furniture. It is a prototype that reinvents St. Jerome’s studio painted by Antonello de Messina completed in the latter half of the 15th century. Urban Biombo is a new “equipment” suitable for a house, an office, a loft, a warehouse, a clothing boutique or a book shop.

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

Urban Biombo plays with the relationship between architecture, appliance, furniture and a biombo (folding screen), and allows mixed ways of inhabiting the space. It creates dynamic and transformable environments according to the needs of the individual.

It creates multiple lively possibilities and configurations, thanks to its dynamic quality: to work, play, exhibit, investigate, rest, or create. It has the characteristics of a folding screen. It is an adaptable, transformable, efficient, mountable, and demountable nomadic structure that connects and separates. It includes shelves, storage areas, and folding elements in multiple directions, as well as electrical connections that can incorporate lighting and speakers.

Urban Biombo can be purchased as a complete prototype —which includes 4 multifunctional units (three vertical and one horizontal) — or also as individual units. Each unit consists of a light structure with two functional panels attached, as well as wheels for easy movement. Each panel has fixed and folding elements that allow it to open, close, fold or rotate. It also includes portable shelves and baskets, seating, and resting areas. The dimensions of each unit are 30 x 180 x h 180 cm; all combined occupy 5,83 cubic meters.

Urban Biombo draws its inspiration from the Japanese byōbu or wind protection screen. It is a structure for intimacy and “serious fun” relationships that allows a multiplicity of life forms and deconstructs the modern cell eloquently satirized by Jacques Tati. It can also configure privacy spaces in disaster relief situations where it is necessary to accommodate a large number of people in open spaces.

It is very quick to assemble (10 minutes per unit). It is easy to store and easy to move. Its materials are recyclable, light and durable. It consists of a tubular aluminum structure of 1,5 cm and attached panels of melamine of 1.5 cm, with several options for color finishes.

Project team: Marta Rodriguez + Dijana Handanovic

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

HOMEPAGE NEXT PAGE