A hillside house in Andalusia where eight different timber boards create a vertical rhythm of light and shade across the exterior.
Board-formed concrete architecture
We build with the grain of the formwork.
Formwork is an architecture studio that designs buildings cast entirely in raw, board-formed concrete - leaving the timber’s texture, shadow, and memory pressed permanently into the stone.
No paint. No polish. No applied finish. The texture is the facade.
Most buildings hide their making. We do the opposite. Every wall we cast is a record of the timber that shaped it - the knots, the gaps, the carpentry - preserved in liquid stone.
Raw board-formed concrete is not a style choice for us; it is a discipline. It demands slow drawings, precise formwork, honest structure, and light that knows how to read a rough surface.
24Concretestructures
04Continents
00Coatings applied
Selected work
Projects 01-05Two cast-concrete towers joined by a lower workshop, arranged around a shaded patio in the Sonoran Desert.
A 14-metre clear-span market hall in Lisbon, built from folded cast-concrete plates and a north-facing sawtooth roof.
A small chapel set in a volcanic stone valley, where thick walls and a single lancet opening focus all daylight onto the altar.
A single concrete wall in Mexico City that rises, folds, and becomes the roof of a courtyard gallery for contemporary sculpture.
Process
01-04Timber
We select, sand, scar, and stain timber boards so each panel leaves a deliberate trace in the cured concrete.
Formwork
Forms are built like furniture: tight joints, controlled gaps, and proportioned panels mapped to the elevation.
Pour + Cure
Pours are timed, vibrated, and cured slowly. Each wall records one moment: the mix, the weather, the craft.
Stripping
When the forms are removed, the building is finished. What remains is structure, surface, and shadow.
Two offices, one material, fourteen people.
Founded in 2012 by Sofia Mercier and Jonas Cove, Formwork brings together architects, structural designers, and concrete finishers around a single obsession: casting buildings that are beautiful before anything is added.
We do not outsource the concrete thinking. Our team models each pour, draws every panel joint, and supervises the strike - because in raw concrete, the drawing is only half complete until the formwork is built.
Sofia MercierManaging Director
Jonas CoveDesign Director
Elena OrtsProject Lead
Marc TeyConcrete Specialist
Barcelona · Mexico City
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Studio FormworkCarrer d'Aragó 104, 4a
08015 Barcelona, Spain
Calle Ordfiales 19
San Rafael, CDMX 06470
Mexico