Atlas

Studio concept by Minimolo

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Plate 00Long section through an stepped building

Architecture drawn from the section up.

A A

Atlas designs through the section: the vertical cut that shows ground, floors, light and movement in one drawing. This site presents the practice's archive as working drawings and turns a client's first choices into a written brief.

Atlas is a practice. Its projects, drawings and briefs are original studio concept content, and the brief builder is a rules-based simulation that runs in your browser.

Six plates

projects, each read through one section drawing. Filter by type and year, then inspect a plate for its drawing key, facts and full description.

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Plate 01

Lightwell Library

Civic, 2025

A neighbourhood library cut through its middle by a single shaft of daylight.

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Drawing key

  1. Pitched rooflight over the lightwell
  2. First-floor reading gallery
  3. Ground-floor lending hall
  4. Below-ground stack lit from the lightwell
  5. Entrance canopy
Facts
TypeCivic
Year2025
UsePublic library
Area band600–2,000 m²
LevelsBasement, ground and first floor

Brief

The brief asked for a lending library that could stay legible as one room while holding quiet study, children's reading and a closed stack. Atlas answered with a compact three-level block and a single vertical void at its centre. Every floor faces the void, so a visitor on any level can see the others, find the stair and understand where the quieter rooms sit before walking to them.

Site condition

The plot is a deep mid-block site with blank party walls on both sides and only a narrow street frontage. Side windows were not possible, and the street face could light only the front third of the plan. Rather than spread the library thin, the section pushes the building down one level and opens it upward, treating the roof as the main facade for light.

Section strategy

The cut shows three bands. The lending hall sits at street level behind a deep canopy. Above it, a reading gallery wraps the lightwell on two sides, with desks at the edge of the void. Below ground, the stack is lit from the same shaft through an opening in the ground-floor slab, so the archive feels part of the library rather than a store room.

Structure and material

Concrete walls and slabs form a heavy, fire-resistant shell around the books and hold an even temperature through the day. Inside that shell, shelving, balustrades and desks are lighter timber pieces, set back from the structure so they can be replaced. The pitched rooflight is the only glazed element on the roof, framed in steel with an outer louvre to soften summer sun.

Light and movement

Daylight falls down the shaft and fades through the levels, brightest at the gallery desks and softest in the stack. Movement follows the light: visitors enter under the canopy, see the void ahead, and use the stair alongside it to rise to reading or descend to the archive. The brightest point of the building also marks its main route, so signage can stay minimal.

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Plate 02

Terrace Row

Housing, 2023

A row of houses that climbs a slope in half-levels, each ending in its own garden.

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Drawing key

  1. Living room at street level
  2. Kitchen on the half-level
  3. Split-level stair
  4. Garden terrace
  5. Front bedroom under the pitched roof
Facts
TypeHousing
Year2023
UseTerraced family houses
Area bandUnder 150 m² per house
LevelsFour half-levels

Brief

The concept explores a row of family houses on a sloping street, each narrow enough to share party walls yet generous enough to feel like a detached home inside. The brief asked for a front room at street level, a kitchen that meets the garden, and bedrooms that stay quiet. Splitting each house into half-levels gives every one of those rooms its own floor height.

Site condition

The ground rises steadily from the street to the rear boundary. A conventional house would need either a deep basement dug into the slope or a garden reached by an external stair. Atlas lets the house follow the ground instead. The front half sits at street level, the rear half one half-storey higher, and a retaining wall between them does the work of the slope.

Section strategy

Four half-levels stack around a split-level stair in the middle of the plan. The living room opens to the street, the kitchen sits a half-flight above at garden level, the front bedroom sits over the living room, and a loft room under the high end of the roof completes the sequence. Each turn of the stair arrives at a different room, so no corridor is needed.

Structure and material

Masonry party walls carry timber floors that span across the narrow plot, keeping the structure repetitive along the row. The retaining wall in the middle of each house is concrete, the only heavy element below the slope. A single pitched roof runs from the low street edge to the high garden edge, giving the loft its height and keeping the street elevation modest.

Light and movement

Light enters from both ends: the tall front window lights the living room and the garden glazing lights the kitchen. Because the floors are offset, light from each end reaches across the stair into the middle of the house. Daily movement is short and direct. Arriving from the street, residents climb a half-flight to cook and step straight out onto the garden terrace.

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Plate 03

Sawtooth Workshop

Workplace, 2022

A single open hall for making, lit evenly through a timber sawtooth roof.

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Drawing key

  1. North-facing roof glazing
  2. Timber sawtooth trusses
  3. Open workshop floor
  4. Mezzanine office
  5. Full-height loading door
Facts
TypeWorkplace
Year2022
UseMaking workshop and office
Area band600–2,000 m²
LevelsGround floor and mezzanine

Brief

The concept imagines a shared workshop for furniture and small-batch fabrication, with a modest office for planning and finishing. Makers need even light without glare on their benches, a wide clear floor for moving material, and a direct route from the street to the machines. The brief kept the office small and lifted above the floor, so the hall itself could stay one uninterrupted working space.

Site condition

The site is a flat, rectangular yard with vehicle access on one short side and neighbouring sheds close along both long sides. Windows in the long walls would look straight into neighbouring buildings and let in little light. The roof is the only free surface, which led the design toward top light and a plan with no windows on the long walls at all.

Section strategy

Four repeated sawtooth bays span the hall. Each bay has a vertical glazed face turned away from direct sun and a sloping solid roof behind it. The hall floor stays clear of columns, with benches laid out beneath the bays. At the far end, a timber mezzanine holds the office and overlooks the floor, while the near end opens fully through a loading door.

Structure and material

The roof is a series of glulam trusses, each forming one tooth of the sawtooth and spanning the full width of the hall. The trusses sit on concrete walls that also act as a fire separation from the neighbours. The mezzanine uses the same timber, bolted rather than glued, so it can be taken down and rebuilt if the workshop layout changes.

Light and movement

North-facing glazing gives soft, consistent daylight across the benches through the whole day, with no direct sun on the work surface. Material arrives through the loading door, moves down the length of the hall from cutting to assembly to finishing, and leaves the same way. The office stair sits at the end of that line, so planning happens beside the finished work.

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Plate 04

Cistern Gallery

Cultural, 2024

A gallery set into the ground and reached by a long ramp beneath a planted roof.

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Drawing key

  1. Glazed entry pavilion
  2. Ramp descending along the hall wall
  3. Vaulted main hall
  4. Planted earth roof
  5. Roof light slot
Facts
TypeCultural
Year2024
UseExhibition gallery
Area band600–2,000 m²
LevelsEntry pavilion and one buried hall

Brief

The concept is a gallery for large, heavy and light-sensitive works, on a public green that should remain open. The brief asked for one large hall with stable conditions, a clear accessible route from ground level, and almost no visible building above ground. Atlas set the hall below the surface and kept a single small pavilion above ground to mark the entrance.

Site condition

The green is a level open space used for walking and gatherings, and the brief treated losing it as unacceptable. The section answers by placing the hall in the ground and returning the surface as a planted roof. The ground lifts gently over the hall and meets the existing level at the edges, so the gallery reads as a low landform rather than a building on the green.

Section strategy

Visitors enter through a glazed pavilion at ground level and descend a long ramp that runs along the hall wall, seeing the whole room open up below them before they reach the floor. The ramp replaces stairs entirely, so every visitor takes the same route. At the far end, a narrow slot in the roof brings a single band of daylight down the back wall.

Structure and material

Thick concrete walls retain the surrounding earth and give the hall a large thermal mass, which keeps temperature and humidity steady for the works. The roof is a row of shallow concrete vaults, strong enough to carry soil and planting and low enough to keep the landform gentle. The pavilion above is a light steel frame with glass, deliberately different from the buried mass.

Light and movement

The building moves from bright to controlled light. Daylight floods the pavilion, dims along the ramp as the route descends, and settles into the even artificial light of the hall. The roof slot is the one exception: a measured band of daylight on the back wall that changes through the day and draws visitors to the far end of the room.

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Plate 05

Ring School

Education, 2026

Classrooms arranged in a ring around a covered yard that works as hall, playground and street.

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Drawing key

  1. Ground-floor classroom opening to the yard
  2. Covered yard
  3. Translucent yard roof
  4. Gallery walkway
  5. Upper classroom
Facts
TypeEducation
Year2026
UsePrimary school
Area bandOver 2,000 m²
LevelsGround and first floor around a covered yard

Brief

The concept imagines a school where the heart of the building is a sheltered outdoor room rather than a corridor. The brief asked for classrooms with direct access to open space, a place for the whole school to gather in any weather, and clear supervision from the edges. A ring of two-storey classroom wings around one covered yard brings all three needs into a single plan.

Site condition

The site is open and exposed, with wind crossing it for much of the year and no existing buildings to shelter a play space. An open playground would be unusable in poor weather. By closing the ring and covering the yard, the building makes its own sheltered microclimate, and the solid outer walls of the classroom wings take the wind so the yard stays calm.

Section strategy

The cut runs through two opposite wings and the yard between them. Ground-floor classrooms open straight onto the yard through full-height glazing. Upper classrooms open onto a gallery walkway that overhangs the yard edge, giving a covered route at ground level beneath it. The yard roof rises above both wings so the space reads as the tallest room in the school.

Structure and material

The classroom wings are a concrete frame with timber infill walls and acoustic timber ceilings, robust enough for daily use and easy to repair. The yard roof is a light steel truss spanning between the wings, covered with translucent panels. The gallery cantilevers from the first-floor slab and is steadied by slender posts at its outer edge, so the ground beneath stays open.

Light and movement

Classrooms take light from two sides, through the outer wall and through the glazing to the yard, which keeps rooms evenly lit. The translucent roof fills the yard with diffuse light. Children move around the ring rather than along corridors, always in sight of the yard, and every classroom door leads directly to the gallery or to the yard itself.

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Plate 06

Stair House

Housing, 2025

A narrow house organised around one rooflit stair that carries light to every floor.

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Drawing key

  1. Rooflight over the stair
  2. Central stair
  3. Kitchen and living at street level
  4. Top-floor bedroom
  5. Rear yard
Facts
TypeHousing
Year2025
UseSingle-family house
Area bandUnder 150 m²
LevelsGround, two upper floors and roof

Brief

The concept explores a family house on a plot only one room wide and several rooms deep, between two existing buildings. The brief asked for three bedrooms, an open kitchen and living space, and a small yard, without making the house feel like a long corridor. Atlas placed a single open stair in the middle of the depth, so every room sits one step from the centre.

Site condition

Party walls close both long sides, so the only openings are the street front, the yard at the rear and the roof. On a deep, narrow plot like this, the middle of the house is usually the darkest part. The section turns that middle into the stair void and gives it a rooflight, so the centre becomes the brightest part of the house instead.

Section strategy

The stair void divides each floor into a front room and a rear room. At ground level, kitchen and living space face the street, with the rear room opening to the yard. Upper floors hold bedrooms front and rear, each reached directly from a stair landing. Because the stair is open, the house stays visually connected from the kitchen to the rooflight.

Structure and material

The existing party walls are lined but not given new loads. Instead, a light steel frame stands inside the plot, carrying timber floors that span from the front and rear walls to the edges of the stair void. The stair is a folded steel plate with timber treads, open between flights so light passes through it on its way down.

Light and movement

The rooflight sends daylight straight down the void to the ground floor, so even the kitchen in the middle of the plan has light from above. Each landing works as a small threshold, giving the bedrooms some privacy from the stair. Movement through the house is always vertical, and every trip up or down passes through the brightest point of the house.

Brief builder

Choose what the building is for, how large it is and what matters most. Fixed rules in this page compose a written brief and an indicative section; every choice changes the drawing.

demo sheet: a home of 150–600 m² with daylight and outdoor connection as priorities.

Sheet

demo brief A-BRIEF-00

Use
Home
Area band
150–600 m²
Priorities
Daylight, Outdoor connection
Drawing
Indicative diagram, not to scale
L0L1 1 2
  • L0 Living and kitchen
  • L1 Bedrooms
  • Diagonal hatch: cut concrete
  • Dashed lines: daylight path
  • Circled numbers: section moves

Section moves

  1. Lightwell with rooflight through the middle bay
  2. Ground-level court and roof terrace

Spatial intent

A home that keeps daily life together on the ground floor and gives each upper room its own relationship to light and outlook. The section is set out as two storeys across three structural bays, within 150–600 m². Two moves follow from the priorities: a lightwell carries daylight down to the lowest floor; and the main room opens to a ground-level court, with a terrace on the roof.

Spatial sequence

  1. Covered threshold off the street
  2. Hall with coats, storage and the stair
  3. Living and kitchen on L0
  4. Doors from the main room to the ground-level court
  5. Bedrooms on L1
  6. Roof terrace above the top level
  7. Utility room and storage beside the entrance

Open questions for the first conversation

  1. How many people will live here, and how might that change over time?
  2. Which rooms need direct sun, and which need even, indirect light?
  3. Should the court be private, shared with neighbours or open to visitors?

How a section-led practice works

Five stages, each tested in section before anything is fixed in plan.

  1. Survey

    Record the site, its levels and its light before drawing anything.

  2. Cut

    Draw one section through the most important room and read it against the brief.

  3. Test

    Move floors, voids and openings in section until light and movement agree.

  4. Draw

    Fix the section, then derive plans and elevations from it.

  5. Build

    Carry the section into structure and detail so the idea survives construction.