Sordo Madaleno: Sordo Madaleno: Honoring Legacy, Opening Space for the Next 90 Years
Sordo Madaleno is a third-generation Mexican architecture studio, founded in 1937 and now operating between Mexico City and London. Nearly a century of practice has produced an extraordinary body of work across hospitality, culture, civic space, and residential architecture, shaped by deep attentiveness to land, material, and community.
The Challenge
When their proposal came to ROOM FOR MAGIC, they were entering a pivotal new chapter: a new London office and the launch of Obra as a public research and exhibition space, and the need for a brand update that could carry ninety years of knowledge and tradition into its next era with clarity, confidence, and poise.
The studio didn’t need a new identity so much as it needed a new language for the one it had already been living. Across generations, Sordo Madeleno’s approach had remained consistent: listening to the land, building harmony with place, honoring the materials. Now, the philosophy needed to be articulated in a way that could travel with the work into new markets and global conversations.
This central tension is familiar to institutions with deep roots: legacy can either constrain the future or become material for it. Our task was to decide what to carry forward, what to leave behind, and to give shape to the next story.
Research & Strategy
Our research began in Mexico City, where we spent time with the Sordo Madaleno team, explored the studio’s archives, and visited active project sites. Through conversations with leadership, researchers, designers, and family members across generations, we gained a deeper understanding of how the studio’s legacy, process, and ambitions are evolving.
From our insights, we developed a shared framework that could guide both language and design, giving the team a clearer way to communicate their work, what they stand for, and why their practice matters now.
Brand Identity
With a 90-year lineage to draw from, our visual system was inspired by the archive. An early business card and a study of the evolution of the Sordo Madaleno wordmark over the years provided the foundation for this next chapter.
“Room for Magic’s process turned conversation into clarity. Their ability to get into the real nuance and complexity of our brand, through the quality of how they interviewed and listened, became a graphic system that spoke to our roots as much as it spoke to our future. The magic, it turns out, was in the questions.”
— Marissa Glauberman, Global Head of Storytelling, Sordo Madaleno
Website
The brand identity culminated in the expression of a new website. sordomadaleno.com was designed to hold ninety years of work without flattening it. The project section balances past and present through two distinct modes. Case Studies foreground the current work while the Index makes the full archive of work visible, searchable, and accessible. Within individual project pages, the visual and the processual coexist. Photography is hero, while archival and reference images live on the page as footnotes, a nod to documentation, process, and annotation. The overall rhythm of the site was built with growth in mind: as new case studies and projects are added, they fall into a structure that feels generous, expansive, and ready for the next chapter.
Obra
Obra, the studio’s new research and public program arm, received its own identity within the broader ecosystem. Full case study coming soon.
