Verdict: Highly Recommended for Bespoke, Experiential Design
Overall Rating: 4.7/5
To understand the studio’s impact, one must look at their most famous built project: The Monolith Residence in the high deserts of New Mexico. Studio Oridomain
Commissioned by a reclusive data scientist, the 4,000-square-foot home appears from the outside as a single, unbroken trapezoidal block of board-formed concrete. There are no windows visible from the approach. Critics initially decried it as a "bunker" or "a rejection of nature."
However, upon entering Studio Oridomain’s design, the truth is revealed. The "windows" are not cutouts; they are courtyards. The home is shaped like a donut, with a central, open-air atrium (the "Oridomain Core") that floods the interior with diffuse northern light. The lack of street-facing windows forces the inhabitant to look inward—at a curated landscape of gravel, single trees, and perpetually still water. Critics initially decried it as a "bunker" or
Inside, the studio employed their signature "acoustic plaster" to create anechoic chambers (rooms with zero echo) adjacent to resonant halls. The result is a home that shifts between tomb-like silence and cathedral-like echo with the opening of a single door.
Where most architects focus on the volume of a wall, Studio Oridomain focuses on the air around it. They are famous for "negative relief"—subtle, almost invisible indentations in massive surfaces. A wall might look flat from ten feet away, but upon approach, you discover micro-terrains carved into the aggregate. This plays with the viewer’s sense of scale, making a room feel both infinite and intimately textured. The lack of street-facing windows forces the inhabitant
Given that the studio’s waiting list currently extends to 2029, and their smallest project fee exceeds $500,000, most admirers can only dream of ownership. However, the philosophy can be scaled.
