Setting the line — ±0.00
02The studio
A deliberately small practice.
DATUM was founded in 2013 on a single conviction: that a building is better when the people who draw it are the people who build it. We take a handful of commissions a year and hold each from first line to final handover.
We are architects and we are builders. There is no line in our office between design and delivery, because we have found that the line is where quality is lost. When the studio that drew the detail is also the studio that sets it on site, the tolerance holds.
We work slowly, and we work small. A handful of buildings a year, each given the full attention of the people whose names are on the door. We turn away more than we take. This is not scarcity as strategy; it is the only way we know to build to a fixed standard.
Principles
Four fixed lines we build from.
01
Begin at a datum
Every project starts from one fixed line — a level, a grid, a first principle — that the rest of the work is measured against and never violates.
02
Draw what you can build
We do not draw a detail we have not worked out how to make. Design and construction are the same act, held by the same hands.
03
One material, understood
We would rather know one material completely than specify ten approximately. Restraint is not a style; it is a standard.
04
Build for two centuries
We design for the second owner, and the tenth. Permanence is a brief we set ourselves on every commission, whether the client asks for it or not.
Principals
Two names on the door.
Founding principal — design
Lena Voss
Trained at KADK and at Peter Zumthor's atelier in Haldenstein, Lena founded DATUM to close the gap between the drawing and the wall. She leads design across the studio and has never signed a set of drawings she could not have built herself.
Based in CopenhagenFounding principal — construction
Tomás Reyes
A structural engineer and master builder before he was an architect, Tomás runs delivery for every DATUM commission. He holds the studio's conviction that tolerance is a design decision, not a site problem, and that the two cannot be separated.
Based in LisbonPractice
From first line, 2013.
2013
The line is set
Lena Voss and Tomás Reyes found DATUM in Copenhagen as a design-build practice — one office for drawing and delivery both.
2016
First handover
Nör Cabin completes on Lofoten. Sixty square metres, one hearth, built entirely by the studio. It sets the standard for everything since.
2019
Lisbon studio
Tomás opens the Lisbon studio to run southern-European commissions and the practice's masonry and render work.
2021
The Plinth
The Basel museum completes after four rejected sample walls and one eighteen-hour pour. It draws the studio its first international attention.
2023
New York studio
A third studio opens in Dumbo to hold the practice's growing work across the Atlantic, on the same terms as the other two.
2024
Datum Tower
One hundred and twenty-eight homes complete in Rotterdam — the studio's largest building, held to the same three-millimetre tolerance as its smallest.
Studios
Three rooms, one standard.
CopenhagenHeadquarters
Refshalevej 163A, 1432 København K, Denmark55.6926° N 12.6100° E
Refshalevej 163A, 1432 København K, Denmark55.6926° N 12.6100° E
LisbonStudio
Rua da Boavista 84, 1200-068 Lisboa, Portugal38.7078° N 9.1553° W
Rua da Boavista 84, 1200-068 Lisboa, Portugal38.7078° N 9.1553° W
New YorkStudio
68 Jay Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY 11201, United States40.7033° N 73.9881° W
68 Jay Street, Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY 11201, United States40.7033° N 73.9881° W
Commissions
Begin at the line.
Start an enquiry
[email protected]
+45 32 96 00 13 — Copenhagen
A handful of commissions a year.