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studio tso’ka | architecture & spatial design

@studio_tsoka

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spatial practice exploring place, culture & change
through design, research & storytelling
sikkim • bangalore • london

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‘why urban design is bad at talking about feelings’ started with something i kept coming back to.

cities are very good at talking about safety, access, density and connectivity. fear, discomfort, exclusion and belonging are much harder to put in a report.

but cities already produce all of those feelings anyway. in the bench you can’t lie on, the place you’re not meant to linger, or the street that quietly makes you feel watched. “Hostile Architecture” has almost been rebranded as “Defensive Architecture”.

this piece is me trying to understand why lived experience only seems to count once it has been translated into something measurable.

check substack for the full article.

#UrbanDesign #Architecture #Urbanism #PublicSpace #BuiltEnvironment

[UrbanStudies ArchitectureWriting UrbanDesign Placemaking BuiltEnvironment PublicSpace CityCulture SpatialDesign] by @studio_tsoka

archive 08 - ‘how films teach us to read cities’ looks at what cinema chooses to frame, what gets left outside it, and how those images shape what we expect from a place.

long before we visit a city, we’ve already imagined it.

films teach us to recognise places through certain images. Paris becomes romance. Tokyo becomes sensory overload. New York becomes ambition. some cities become beauty. others become chaos.

and when the same images repeat often enough, they begin to feel like the whole story.

check substack for the full article.

#design #CinemaAndCities #FilmAndArchitecture #Urbanism #visualculture

[UrbanStudies ArchitectureWriting CinemaStudies BuiltEnvironment UrbanStorytelling CityCulture] by @studio_tsoka

archive 07 - three sizes of small

the first built work in the archive.

the crib is a modular tiny house system - three prototypes at 5,15, and 20 sqm. developed while i was at architenko, and one i've kept thinking with since.

the shell is fixed. the interior is a choice. studio, office, guesthouse, bedroom, care room, reading room. (yes, one you can put in your backyard. if you have one.)

designed for the belgian context - insulated for winter, lifted off the ground. adapted, not finished. meant to be reworked by whoever brings it home.

five archives in, we've been writing about how people negotiate the space they're given. this is a project about giving them the space to negotiate. same argument, in wood and zinc.

from here the feed will start including what the studio has been making. still field notes - just from inside now.

- the crib

#tinyhouse #tinyhome #modulararchitecture #tinyhousedesign smallspaces prefab adu backyardstudio axonometric architecturaldrawing architecture spatialpractice studioarchive adaptivedesign belgianarchitecture by @studio_tsoka

archive 06 - same same but different, but still same.

exposed brick, edison bulbs, a monstera in the corner, bouclé seating, arched mirrors, raw timber tables and a neon sign waiting to be photographed.

None of these elements are inherently bad, but when the same visual formula is repeated everywhere, design begins to lose its relationship with place, climate, culture and the people actually using it.

Algorithmic taste has made copied references feel personal, turning spaces into familiar compositions designed to be recognised instantly and photographed easily.

The problem is not that these spaces are beautiful. It is that they are increasingly designed to be looked at before they are designed to be lived in.

Check Substack for the full article.

[interior design, spatial design, design trends, algorithmic taste, café culture]

#Pinterestification #AirSpace #InteriorDesign #SpatialDesign #DesignCulture by @studio_tsoka

archive 05 - walking, living and pausing through the City of Dawn.

pondicherry is a city thats best understood by foot. a destination-less walk through its streets reveal two distinct urban fabrics, showcasing countless small decisions that make the city intuitive, enjoyable and alive.

field notes by studio tsoka.

#Urbanism #PublicLife #Pondicherry #CityPlanning #StreetsForPeople

keywords
(Urbanism • Walkability • Public Life • Public Realm • Pondicherry • French Quarter • Tamil Quarter • Urban Design • Street Design • City Planning • Human-Scale Cities • Architecture • Studio Tsoka) by @studio_tsoka

archive 04 - the city wakes differently
went to vietnam as a visitor. hanoi, da nang, hoi an, ho chi minh.
four cities that look almost nothing alike, yet the same morning kept happening in all of them.
by six in the morning the parks were full. elderly walking in loose rows, runners cutting through, a couple of tourists still on another timezone, half-joining. by nine the heat took it back. stools folded, shade got claimed and the space changed hands.
hoi an broke the pattern. it is too hot for mornings, so it gathers in the evening instead. same instinct but a different hour.
i was pleasantly surprised by how little of this is designed. the lake, the beach, the alley etc., none of it is programmed for what people do with it. the design holds still and the city keeps rewriting who it’s for, by the hour.
(kept thinking about gangtok the whole time. terrain there does what heat does here. same question but different author.)

- vietnam, field notes 2026

#fieldnotes #publicspace #spatialpractice #vietnam #hanoi
[ vietnam, third space, urban life, morning ritual, open spaces ] by @studio_tsoka

archive 03 - gangtok

everyday spatial life in a hill town.

space is not quite fixed here.
it is shared, compressed, and constantly negotiated.

different systems overlap;
formal and informal,
pedestrians and vehicles,
planned and adapted.

the terrain shapes how the city grows,
but growth itself does not always translate to infrastructure.

much of it exists in smaller systems
that continue to hold the city together.

[gangtok urban life] [hill town infrastructure] [everyday spatial systems]

#gangtok #sikkim #hilltowns #spatialpractice #everydayurbanism by @studio_tsoka

what makes people return to a place?

It’s not always to do with its function.
it’s often something less defined -
how it allows pause, exchange, routine, or simply being.

the spaces that stay alive tend to hold more than one use,
and more than one kind of experience.

studio tso’ka looks at how these spaces are formed
and how they can be built, extended or reimagined.

based between gangtok & london.

[ spatial practice, interiors, architecture, urban design, public life ]

#spatialpractice #placemaking #everydayspace #designculture #gangtok by @studio_tsoka

this started from living across very different places -
gangtok, assam, manipal, london

each of them holds space differently.

in some, space is shaped by terrain and movement.
in others, by landscape, routine, or density.
in others, by infrastructure, history, and constant overlap.

i didn’t think of it consciously at the time,
but these environments slowly changed how i understood space
and the people moving through it.

coming from architecture,
i was initially drawn to buildings and form.

but over time,
what became more important was how cities actually function
and how differently they do (or don’t) for people.

this is how studio tso’ka grew.

it is an ongoing attempt to make sense of space
across interiors, buildings, and cities
and to make it more legible, even to those without formal training.

this is where it begins.

based between gangtok and london

architecture • interiors • urbanism • everyday space • spatial observation

[architecture / urban design / city life / spatial thinking] by @studio_tsoka