stock-a-studio

stock-a-studio is an architectural design practice founded by Xavi Laida Aguirre in 2015. The practice blurs the boundaries between the physical and the digital, creating mixed-reality spaces that interrogate the circular movement of contemporary commodities. Through iterative experiments in materials reuse, temporary architectures, and product manipulation, stock-a-studio “links material resources to the immaterial systems that proliferate and qualify them,” according to the firm’s website. The practice is currently based in Detroit.

Recent projects include:

• someparts, a public-facing catalog of customizable parts for small architecture and furniture design projects;
• someparts x HIVE RISE, a temporary 20,000-square-foot scenic architecture installation for an immersive live performance;
• stock, a series of over 600 images of materials that have been purchased and returned from big box stores on a rotating $200 credit. 

Xavi Laida Aguirre holds an MArch from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and a BA from Northeastern University. Aguirre is an assistant professor at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, where they were the 2017–2018 William Muschenheim Fellow. They are the director of Beta Matter XR Lab at the University of Michigan. In fall 2022, Aguirre will join the faculty of the MIT School of Architecture + Planning.

Learn more:

• Ash Fure’s “Hive Rise” Is a Visceral Experience in Sound, The New Yorker
• Stock-a-studio fashions a modular gym for Materials & Applications, The Architect’s Newspaper
• Stock Options: A Taxonomy of Construction Materials Turned into Architectural Portraits, PIN–UP