Belonging isn't about mimicking what's next door. It's about answering the same questions the context already answered.
This idea recurs across our work because it keeps proving itself under real conditions, not just in the studio. A building can look nothing like its neighbours and still belong completely.
"A building can look nothing like its neighbours and still belong completely."
We first noticed this while documenting a completed project long after handover — the kind of observation that only shows up once a building has been lived in for a while, not on the drawings.
What follows from this isn't a rule so much as a bias we now bring into every early design conversation: a default we have to actively argue ourselves out of, rather than one we have to remember to apply.