MorenoMasey

Rodrigo Moreno Masey, founder and principal of architectural firm MorenoMasey has a reputation for understanding the spaces we use. For the past ten years he and his team have designed and built numerous residential, commercial and private properties that demonstrate a design-led approach. Without imposing an end goal studio aesthetic he achieves ‘answers and solutions’ architecture with a clear understanding of the opportunities, and a strong client focus.

The practice has extensive experience across a cross-section of building types and projects that include historic and listed buildings as well as considered new build schemes. Designing from the inside out, whether or not the building exists is key to their ethos, where flow, layout and space planning drive the end result internally and externally. The team are connected by this shared desire to create houses that work and function as homes, a sentiment which underpins design, planning and execution of all their projects.

This process is driven and overseen by Rodrigo Moreno Masey who stresses that his team is rarely self-indulgent “we deliver our client’s vision, better. We apply basic principles of design and understand where compromises can be made. A client may have an idea of what they want to achieve and our goal is to translate that”. This is fundamentally different to practices that have an established aesthetic style that drives or dictates the design.

MorenoMasey is an integral part of the pre-acquisition team and the appraisal of new sites where the same approach applies and considerations of light and space guide the architectural process. The buildings that result are focused on the people that live in them, created with a vision for how the space itself will be used. The practice is highly experienced in built projects and as such has a strong understanding of the physical stage that follows conceptual development.

This expertise is instrumental when it comes to assembling and manipulating the complex myriad of materials that comprise the build; in a broad portfolio each building presents its own unique challenges; what is right for one building is unlikely to be right for another. The rich and varied material palette that is evident throughout the MorenoMasey portfolio demonstrates how this skill is applied to finishes and interior detail. This established track record of taking larger scale projects through from concept design to completion phases is underpinned by the practice strength in obtaining complex planning and estate consents.

MorenoMasey is currently working on a sensitive restoration of a 17th century listed farmhouse in Hampshire; a country house in Berkshire; a 1920s warehouse project of 16 apartments on Brick Lane; a Georgian villa and mews on the Grosvenor Estate and a private residence in Holland Park. In the commercial sector, the company is renowned for its repositioning work for Nando’s and GBK, as well as architectural branding for Rosa’s Thai.

The company’s varied portfolio demonstrates a confident understanding of materiality, lifestyle and opportunity. In the case of an urban project in Notting Hill at a former brickworks, the team created an edgy, cool, Manhattan style interior but is equally at home in Belgravia, working within the parameters of listed buildings to create homes of grandeur and restraint. Their work is as likely to take them to brownfield sites, developing modern industrial projects in interesting parts of London as to houses of stature on country estates.

Rodrigo Moreno Masey is a member of RIBA and ARB and has spent the past 18 years in private practice, notably working for 11 years as a director with the firm Michaelis Boyd as the third employee, before going on to establish his own practice. He has grown the company to a comfortable team of 20, a size at which he is able to maintain control over the creative and technical process in each project that they undertake.