MERIDIAN ATELIER

Architecture practice — Basel · Rotterdam · Est. 2009

Buildings committed
to concrete. Each one
still standing. Each one
still argued about.

We build in section, not in elevation.

Poured concrete. Load-bearing conviction. No curves — anywhere.

Read the index ↓

01 — Practice

A building is a decision
you cannot take back.

Meridian Atelier was founded in 2009 by two structural engineers who kept losing arguments with architects. We design civic archives, concert halls, housing blocks and factories — buildings whose programme is measured in decades, for clients who intend to be judged by them. We work in one material because concrete does not lie about how it was made: every shutter board, every pour line, every day of weather is recorded in the face of the wall.

We do not render sunsets. We issue sections, schedules and a fixed fee. If a decision cannot be defended in section at 1:50, it does not survive to site.

Built works
24
Gross floor area
311,400 m²
People, one office
16
Curves permitted
0

02 — Index of works

Eight selected works,
drawn — not photographed.

Hover or tab across a row to raise its elevation. On touch, tap once to view, again to close.

03 — Method

Four moves.
In this order. Always.

  1. A

    Datum

    We survey until the site stops surprising us. One horizontal line is fixed — the datum — and every decision for the next four years is measured against it. The datum is never moved. Clients test this. It holds.

  2. B

    Mass

    The building is blocked as solid volumes before a single room is named. If the massing does not carry the argument from four hundred metres, no façade will rescue it at four.

  3. C

    Section

    The section is the contract. Light, structure, air and people are resolved in one drawing at 1:50, signed by both partners. Plans are derived from it — never the reverse.

  4. D

    Pour

    We write the shutter layout ourselves and attend every structural pour. Concrete gives you one attempt; we have never asked a client to pay for a second. The formwork boards are numbered, archived, and reused as the building's furniture.

04 — Request for proposal

We take four
commissions a year.

Two are currently allocated for 2027. We respond to every serious RFP within ten working days, with a position — not a brochure. Budgets below €2M are respectfully declined; monuments are not the only buildings that matter, but ours require mass.