We go out of our way to celebrate and facilitate custom fabrication and construction in our projects.
The work that we do at MDS is personal: to our clients, to the site, to the community, and ultimately to us as designers. The close relationships we develop, especially with our clients, are what make the projects what they become.
We aim to achieve strength and beauty through structure. To that end, we tend to believe that structure is sufficiently beautiful and further adornment or ornamentation is often unnecessary. That’s not to say that skin is not important, it is. But we search for the essence behind skin and try to reveal the truth in our design.
Our practice has always been diverse. We look to cultures around the world for precedent as a way of “rediscovering” something new. We believe that a great deal of knowledge is hidden in tradition and that the power to enlighten the spirit of people can be found in the roots of traditional cultures.
Humankind is inseparable from nature and its moments of beauty and decay. We like to work with materials that are intended to age over a very long period of time, such as: wood, stone, steel and glass. We try to avoid veneers, which to us suggest something different.