Quorum Studios

In a register full of practices that enter design awards, Manny Pedro has been asked to judge them. He sat on the panel for Queensland’s HIA House, Kitchen and Bathroom of the Year, which is a different order of recognition from a shortlisting, because the industry does not hand you the scorecard unless it already trusts your eye. More than a decade in practice across two continents sits behind that, worked to a plain discipline he states simply as less is more, which shows up in the buildings as intuitive solutions rather than gestures.

The other half of this studio is the part most practices never think to build. Vanessa Pedro holds an honours degree in psychology and spent years in human resources and people development before taking on the client side of an architecture business. Building a house is the most emotionally exposed purchase most people ever make, and having someone whose actual training is in people running that relationship is rare and genuinely useful. The studio has stayed small on purpose, declining to trade intimacy for scale, and all eighteen of its reviewers have given it five stars. For an owner who wants a considered home and a calm process, that is an unusually well matched pair.