London Studio

London, UK

2025

Sordo Madaleno’s London architecture studio reflects a lineage begun by Juan Sordo—a tradition of sharing domestic space as ground for conversation and hosting. As a workplace, this translates into dedicated areas for creativity, conversation and gathering. The studio divides into three, accommodating an open-plan space for design; an intermediate zone for meeting; and a final large space for exchange. The latter is known as Obra, Sordo Madaleno’s transdisciplinary laboratory, open library, and public living room; a public-facing space for curiosity, testing, and dialogue.

Sordo Madaleno London Studio Exterior Entry way

Sordo Madaleno London’s premises extend along a linear wing inside a 19th century warehouse in the newly regenerated area of King’s Cross. Known as the Canal Building, it forms part of a historic industrial complex on the bank of Regent’s Canal and was once a site of animal feed and agricultural condiment manufacture. The Victorian warehouse maintains an unadorned brick structure and expansive interior, its proportions lending themselves to different versions of workspace that in later years became the home of global publishing house, Phaidon. Today, those same lofty dimensions are used as flexible space for research and creative practice.

Sordo Madaleno London Studio Interior with large windows and brick wall. Long design desks with work stations

Casa SM, Mexico City, Mexico, 1951. Juan Sordo's suspended dining table—a surface held in space for gathering and conversation—is the origin of the long worktables that run through the London studio today. Courtesy of the Sordo Madaleno archive.

Sordo Madaleno London Studio interior. A Mexican architecture studio inside a Victorian warehouse in King's Cross.

As with all Sordo Madaleno’s work, listening to the building’s history was key to the vision for its future. The design takes cues from what existed: the inherited structure and materials of the warehouse’s industrial interior. Original columns are used as key organising elements, positioning new walls that divide up meeting rooms in the central meeting zone, and serving as anchors for long worktables in the studio space. Existing brick and steel elements also inform the design’s material and colour story. New steel sheets are introduced as partitions, with black aperture frames and furniture extending the original structure’s darkened tones.

A central corridor cuts through the longitudinal axis of the studio floor, forming the meeting zone, and creating a deliberate spatial sequence between the studio on one side and Obra on the other. Along the waterside that traverses the entire length of the premises, large, tall windows allow movement inside to animate the canal itself—the team’s daily motions visible from the opposite bank.

Sordo Madaleno family residence, Mexico City, c. 1980s. Courtesy of Sordo Madaleno archive.

Obra, Canal Building, King's Cross, London, 2024. The room is set up to feel like a living room.

Obra, Canal Building, King's Cross, London, 2024. The living room as origin: the domesticity of Sordo Madaleno's family homes finds new form in Obra—the studio's public living room—where the tradition of gathering around books and conversation continues.

From the practice’s earliest days, Juan Sordo built a studio characterised by collaboration. Architecture was made through testing—the early Mexico studios prioritising model making, sketching, and material experimentation, each having always had dedicated space. Three generations later, in London, the space at King’s Cross offers the same composition: a studio and model shop at one end, serving as its figurative ‘kitchen’; and Obra, its living room, at the other.