SMAQ is a Berlin-based collaborative studio for architecture, urbanism and research that focuses urban design and architecture as a (re)active practice of “making something which cannot perform without the assistance of its environment”. 

Looking at the city as inclusive to infrastructural and landscape contexts and their everyday usages, SMAQ’s approach to design is based on a concept of continuity in urbanism, landscape, architecture and interior. The studio conceives the built environment as a product reacting to and acting within an extensive field of forces. The projects aim at intensifying existing environments and unfold social relevance in offering diversity and permeability. The deployment of integrative morphologies and tectonics provide our architecture with the capacity to productively negotiate contradictions of the contemporary city while vitally challenging spatial conventions.

SMAQ has received, among other awards, the prestigious AR Award for their public bath in Stuttgart and the Holcim Award for Sustainable Construction for their masterplan Xeritown in Dubai. SMAQ’s work has been published and exhibited widely, most recently at the International Architecture Biennials in Rotterdam and Venice. SMAQ was founded by the architects Sabine Müller and Andreas Quednau. Sabine Müller is architect and Professor for Urbanism at the Oslo School of Architecture, Norway. Andreas Quednau is architect and Professor of Urban Design at Leibniz University Hannover., Germany.