The studio
A small practice
that finishes
what it starts.
Studio VAR works on homes, villas and workplaces in Bulgaria. We are deliberately small: the people you meet at the first conversation are the people who draw your project and the people who turn up on site.
How we got here
Architecture and interiors,
treated as one job.
The practice began in 2019 with a straightforward observation: in most projects the architect leaves before the interior is decided, and the interior designer arrives after the walls are built. The result is a house that has been handed over twice, and a client left to translate between them.
Studio VAR was set up to hold both ends. We work on the volume and the skirting detail with the same attention, and we keep the same people on a project from the measured survey to the day the furniture arrives. It is a slower way to run a studio and it limits how many projects we can take, which is the trade we have chosen to make.
Our work tends to be warm rather than austere. We like natural stone, timber, lime plaster and honest fabric; we like rooms that are quiet enough to put your own life into. Whether a project ends up contemporary or classical is a question we answer from the building and the brief, not from a house style.
How we work
Four things we will not trade away.
-
01
The plan comes first
Before a single material is chosen we resolve how the space works: where you put your coat, where the light falls at four in the afternoon, how two people pass each other in the kitchen. A beautiful finish cannot rescue a plan that fights its occupants.
-
02
Few materials, used well
Most of our projects run on four or five materials. Restraint is not an aesthetic preference so much as a practical one — a short palette is easier to detail, easier to source, easier to repair, and it ages as one thing rather than several.
-
03
Drawn to be built
We draw at the scale things are made at. Joinery sections, tiling set-out, switch heights. If a detail only works in a render, it is not a detail, and we would rather find that out at the drawing board than on site.
-
04
We stay until the end
The difference between a good project and a disappointing one is almost always what happened in the last fifteen per cent. We supervise our own work so that the last fifteen per cent has someone looking after it.
8
Published projects
2019
Practising since
4
Cities in Bulgaria
100%
Delivered with author supervision
The team
Architects, designers
and one visualiser.
The studio is a handful of architects and interior designers working alongside an in-house visualiser, supported by a network of engineers, joinery workshops, stone suppliers and contractors we have built up over years of projects.
We cap the number of live projects rather than hire to meet demand. If we are full we will tell you when we can start — or point you to someone who can start sooner.
Capabilities
- Measured surveys and existing-condition drawings
- Space planning and plan optioneering
- Material, finish and colour schedules
- Bespoke joinery design and shop-drawing review
- Lighting design and switching layouts
- Electrical, plumbing and ventilation coordination
- Photoreal 3D visualisation
- Procurement, logistics and installation scheduling
- Author supervision and snagging
- Documentation in Bulgarian and English
Collaborators
We would rather bring in a specialist than pretend we are one.
Structural engineers
For every alteration that touches the frame, before the drawing is issued rather than after.
Services engineers
Heating, cooling and ventilation coordinated into the ceiling before the ceiling is drawn.
Joinery workshops
Long-standing makers in and around Sofia who can build what we draw and tell us when we are wrong.
Lighting suppliers
Specification support, photometric checks and samples we test on site before we commit.
Elsewhere
Our full portfolio
is also on Behance.
Project sets are published there as they complete, usually with more images than we show here.
Start a project
Come and see us in Sofia.
The first conversation is free, and it is the fastest way to find out whether we are a fit.