Sixty-four peoplein three cities

The practice was started on the suspicion that most buildings are detailed by people who will never have to stand next to them.

Oblique is organised to make that impossible. Projects stay with the team that won them from competition through to the defects period, and every partner is on site at least one day a week. There is no delivery department, and there will not be one.

Six of the sixty-four work full time on façades. They sit in the middle of the studio rather than off to one side, build every system at full size before it is drawn for tender, and hold a veto on any envelope the practice specifies.

The Zürich office occupies a 1960s print works with a workshop on the ground floor and a yard big enough to stand a three-storey mock-up in. Roughly a quarter of the studio’s hours are spent down there rather than at a screen.