A residential and small-commercial studio working in honest materials and passive design — each project documented as a strata of decisions, from site to detail.
Architecture as restraint. We believe a building earns its presence through material honesty — not decoration.
Stratum is a small Melbourne practice working across new homes, renovations, and intimate commercial fit-outs. We design slowly and build deliberately, treating every project as a set of layered decisions — orientation, structure, envelope, surface, detail.
Passive principles sit at the core: how light moves, how a wall holds heat, how a room breathes across a year. The result is quiet, durable architecture that reads clearly and ages well.
New houses and considered renovations. Spaces planned around light, climate, and the way a household actually lives.
Hospitality and retail fit-outs with a material-first sensibility — robust, tactile, and built to wear in rather than out.
Thermal modelling, orientation studies, and envelope detailing that lower running costs and raise everyday comfort.
"They designed the parts you never see as carefully as the parts you do. Two years in, the house still feels exactly right — and barely needs heating."