Design ALT + TAB is a leading international design practice known for pushing the boundaries of form. We aim to find the design that fits each place, programme and moment, rather than repeat a house style.
We bring an innovator’s restlessness to every scale, from the curve of designed furniture to the skyline of a city. But for all its formal ambition, the firm’s starting point is always human, driven by the belief that the best design is the one that people feel before they notice.
We do not believe a building becomes good by being correct. Codes, budgets and programmes are the minimum standard for our work but a place people want to return to needs more than that. It needs qualities that are hard to measure, such as the temperature of a room in the afternoon, or a stair that makes you slow down.
That’s why every project begins with its context. Climate, culture, landscape, movement, memory and material give the work its direction. We question assumptions, test alternatives, and work at more than one scale.
And that’s also why the firm stays close to construction. Invention that cannot be built by the people on site is merely a drawing. Every ambitious move the firm makes is negotiated with the mason, fabricator, climate and the ground before it is promised to a client.
Structures shaped by context, driven by invention, and built to last.
Volume, colour, light, and finish designed together with the building.
Custom seating, tables and joinery designed and prototyped in-house.
Every form we make is tested against the life that will happen inside it.
We treat every brief as an invitation to discover something that wasn’t conceived before.
Materials, craft, and local knowledge matter as much as the idea on paper.
The firm is organised so that the people making the decisions are the people doing the work. There is no handover between a concept team and a delivery team, which means the idea that wins the project is the idea that gets built.
Clients see this early. The first conversations are about the problem rather than the picture, and the studio will often return with a reframed brief before it returns with a form.
Once the brief is settled, the team works in the open. Clients see the project while it can still change, in models, samples and drawings rather than in finished images. This takes more trust than a polished presentation, and it produces better buildings, because a client who understands the reasoning behind a design can defend it long after the studio has left.
Decisions are made in front of the thing itself wherever possible. And when the studio disagrees internally, it builds both versions and compares them, because the model settles an argument faster than the meeting does.
Before designing anything, the team immerses itself in context about the place, people, way things are done there, and the reasons why.
The brief is treated as just a jumping off point instead of a conclusion. The team pulls it apart and reframes the problem before solving it.
Ideas are built before they’re finalized. Physical models, material samples, and prototypes help shape the work as much as drawing.
The last phase is subtraction, where the team strips away everything that does not serve the idea until only the essential moves remain.
We work across geographies, and we build each team around the demands of the place. We draw on local knowledge, craft and technical expertise wherever a project is. Ideas, materials and ways of living can travel, and the architecture must belong to where it stands.