Research & Objects

CSA Partners’ Research & Objects practice operates as an architecture research and design studio within the firm, a space where we study historic precedent, materials, and design ideas that inform our broader institutional and cultural work. Rather than active commissions, these projects are continual investigations, close studies of significant buildings, analyzing urban social and cultural impact and clarifying design questions that deepen our understanding of architecture’s history and its ongoing evolution.

Our research has included in-depth studies of Old St. Peter’s in Rome and Chartres Cathedral, two of the most consequential structures in Western architectural history. Additional studies include Hindu temples at Kangra and Bhubhaneshwar, and ancient Zoroastrian structures in central Asia.

Studying edifices like these is how we build the depth of knowledge that shows up in our institutional, cultural and religious commissions, from the proportional relationships in a sanctuary to the way light and procession is used to shape a sense of the sacred.

As an architecture research and design studio, we treat this work as a continuation of the same design thinking that goes into our commissioned projects, just applied to questions of precedent rather than a specific client brief. It’s also where some of our most experimental thinking happens. We test ideas about philosophy, experience in a space, form, structure, and meaning that later surface, in evolved form, in our built work.

This practice reflects something we believe strongly at CSA Partners, that good design comes from sustained and committed study. Understanding why a 12th-century cathedral or a Renaissance basilica still moves people centuries later gives us a richer vocabulary to draw from in our own work today.

Browse our research projects below to see the historic studies that inform how we think about architecture, ideas that continue to shape the buildings we design for clients across the United States and India.