Why Studio KO is in the Design 100

Studio KO was founded in Paris in 2000 by Karl Fournier and Olivier Marty, who met as students at the École des Beaux-Arts. Twenty-five years on, the practice still runs on a two-city rhythm, dividing its work between a Paris studio and Marrakech, and treating that split not as a compromise but as a genuine source of material — European rigour tempered by Moroccan craft and climate.

That fluency reached its widest audience with the Musée Yves Saint Laurent Marrakech, commissioned by Pierre Bergé and opened in October 2017: a raw-brick building whose latticed, loom-like façade reads as much like textile as architecture, shading the galleries against the Marrakech heat. It sits alongside a portfolio of minimalist villas and private houses across France and Morocco, and London’s Chiltern Firehouse — proof that the same restrained hand travels comfortably between museum, hotel and home.