All spatial and visual works done by Studio SMA are dedicated to transforming people’s ordinary lives and daily moments into more meaningful experiences.

A definition of meaningful experiences by the studio is both sensual and intellectual. In other words, the work should deliver more than immediate astonishment and wonderment to beholders. It leaves a kind of trace to deduce or speculate on the design concept and process. Arising simultaneous sensual experience and intellectual curiosity is a way of engaging the reality that contributes to people’s appreciation of the moments.

In order to initiate meaningful experiences, the studio tries to investigate the possibility of unique gestures that are appropriate to a specific location, or an idea that defamiliarizes the status quo. The possibilities are scrutinized by considering various factors- site, context, function, use, program, identity, residents, visitors, passerby, history, time, budget, schedule, etc. An idea must be delivered by form and space themselves, while the materiality and the physicality should reinforce sensual experiences of the idea. Above all, the work should be beautiful and attractive, i.e., not perfectly comprehensible. Therefore, diverse experiments are performed to incarnate the integration of form, matter, and the idea.

Works that generate meaningful experiences for people are not limited by conventional architectural or interior boundaries. Designing furniture, objects, installations, writing, video, etc., the studio encompasses diverse media to generate substantial encounters.