Something & Associates: Cognitive Focused Design Research and Architecture Studio

Something & Associates is an independent design research and architecture studio led by Alexander Pollard, a British architect and researcher based in London. The practice operates at the intersection of architecture, spatial cognition, and environmental phenomena, examining how people intuitively perceive, navigate, and inhabit space. Drawing on research from cognitive science, embodied perception, and behavioural observation, the studio develops architectural strategies that feel immediately familiar yet subtly transformative. A central framework within the practice is Second Nature: an approach that frames architecture as both embodied intuition and renewed environment. Through the orchestration of climatic, sensory, and psychological cues—such as light, temperature, sound, material reflectivity, and spatial sequencing—projects reframe everyday conditions to open new possibilities for encounter, memory, and belonging. Rather than producing fixed narratives, the studio conceives architecture as a relational field, where meaning emerges through use, interpretation, and appropriation. Something & Associates have delivered projects and research-driven interventions in Italy and Canada, and has been winning and shortlisted in international competitions. Operating across architectural design, spatial research, consultancy, and experimental installations, the studio produces work that prioritises perception and use over formal expression—architecture intended to dissolve into everyday life, becoming legible through the ways it shapes routine, gesture, atmosphere, and lived experience.