SIX QUICK ONES WITH STUDIO MARA

Founded in 2014 by Mirjam Danke and Hans-Olaf Schulz, Studio Mara works across architecture, interiors, and furniture with a focus on spatial clarity, material depth, and atmosphere. From their base in Berlin and with projects extending to Mallorca, the studio explores how proportion, light, and texture shape experience, combining efficient planning with precise detailing and a warm, tactile sensibility. Their work balances concept and emotion with quiet confidence.

Studio Mara, Berlin

Fantastic Frank: Mirjam and Hans-Olaf, what a pleasure to finally have this conversation. Let’s begin with the essentials: How would you define your approach to design?

Studio Mara: It’s never easy to define your own style, but a recent Ignant editorial described ours as warm minimalism - an approach that honours what is natural, raw and nuanced. We’re drawn to what is left out, to the atmosphere that emerges through absence. Reduction, for us, has its own intensity. Whether we’re freeing a Berlin loft from the traces of 1990s over-renovation or translating the landscape into an island holiday home, our aim is always to let space breathe by returning it to its essence.

Loft, Berlin

Your dream house or apartment (or other item) to design? Or maybe you already did?
Our 'House of Views' in Mallorca, a place that perhaps captures our sensibility most clearly. One day, we’d love to design a small hotel that carries that same sense of calm and clarity.

House of Views, northwestern coast, Mallorca

Your current favorite restaurant (in Berlin or somewhere else in the world)?
The restaurant at Les Bords de Mer in Marseille, for its simplicity, its light, and the ease with which its architecture and atmosphere come together.

Your favorite app?
The camera - our most essential tool for capturing small details and textures of daily life. Many of these observations end up in our 'Studies in Materiality' series on Instagram.

Your favorite building in Europe?
The works of Valerio Olgiati, especially his early K+N Residence in Zurich and Villa Além in Alentejo, Portugal. We’re drawn to his architecture without references, detached from convention, and entirely its own.

Your one piece of furniture you take with you on every move?
The Eros table by Angelo Mangiarotti. Its clarity, the pure meeting of base and top, and the deliberate choice of stone give it a lasting presence.

Thank you, Mirjam and Hans-Olaf, for sharing your insight and vision. We look forward to finally meeting you in Berlin or on Mallorca soon.

Images by Daniel Faro, Clemens Poloczek, Ana Santl Andersen, and Simon Menges