“You Design Through Making”: Inside Bill Amberg Studio’s Tactile Architecture
In an era where the algorithmic sheen of “frictionless interiors” and “seamless transitions” dominate, leather details almost feel transgressive. An inherently slow material, the processes required for leather’s architectural application are stubbornly analogue. Yet, walk into a room detailed by Bill Amberg Studio and the impact is immediate. The air registers a gentle, earthy scent. Sounds land differently. Surfaces that are often overlooked beg fingers to run along them. Against the churn of design trends, Amberg’s work insists that human senses matter in architecture.
Resistance to speed and disposability — to the flattening of visual culture — isn’t inherently nostalgic. In this case, it emerges from a craftsman’s studio, one where leather is revered as a complex trade with architectural applications that go beyond upholstery or accent. Unfolding from London to Miami to Nevada to Brooklyn, the studio’s contemporary commissions testify to this singular approach, with rooms calibrated through grain, stitched edges that read like spatial notation, and surfaces that hold light with the quiet authority of something living.
Leather floors by Bill Amberg Studio in Clorane Gardens, London, United Kingdom
These effects rely on a technical vocabulary drawn from many trades: saddlery, bookbinding, case making, upholstery — all leather-adjacent disciplines that rarely share a bench. Amberg dissolves those boundaries on purpose. “So there are many types of leather, and there are many techniques associated with those types of leather,” he explains. “And really, in my world, never the twain shall meet. But I kind of like to disassemble that and reassemble it.”
So, Amberg’s studio splices these worlds together. “I like to take something from an idea from bookbinding and put it into a cabinet. And that might be the material or the technique or just meshing them together to make something really unusual and beautiful.” An experimental spirit is integral to the studio’s ways of work. Recently, they have been exploring formed timber substrates from a Finnish maker, where heat and pressure raise the wood into blistered reliefs wrapped in burnishable leather.
A three-year apprenticeship ensures that every maker in the studio can wield this interdisciplinary grammar. The resulting craft is meticulous, the kind of bar that is necessary for architectural precision. Consider the importance of hand stitching: two needles passing through each hole, locking the seam tight against the underlying structure. Yet the finish is refined: “We apply a plant-based gum and hand polish it,” he explains, fusing the fibers and softening the corners so that the seam reads as one continuous stroke. These joints trace the edges, becoming a kind of architectural datum; “one’s hand will register these transitions before the eye does.”
Leather banquette seating by Bill Amberg Studio in 80 Charlotte St, for Derwent London with MAKE Architects | Photography by David Cleveland
Left and right: Leather staircase by Bill Amberg Studio in a designer’s house, Kings Cross, United Kingdom| Photo by David-Cleveland
A little background on the studio’s founder provides context for this approach. Amberg’s mother was an architect who worked with Alvar Aalto in Helsinki, while his father ran a lift and escalator firm. Tools lived in the house, and making was part of the family’s culture: “My mother had a huge old drawing board, and she would design it, and my dad would make it,” Amberg recalls.
Geography mattered, too. The family hails from near Northampton, a leather town defined by hides and tanneries. “Leather was kind of everywhere when I was a boy,” he said. That ubiquity bred fluency. Amberg cut and stitched for fun, becoming increasingly familiar with his material’s possibilities and limitations. An apprenticeship in Australia deepened the practice, grounding him in the discipline, and a bag business followed, with shops in New York and Tokyo. But as fashion lurched toward speed, Amberg stepped away. “I was interested in making beautiful, lasting products that somebody would use every day and keep for the rest of their life,” he said.
The next step, architecture may seem like a leap, but with its inherently longer horizon, crafting spaces was a logical territory. The first commission — a leather floor in Kensington in 1986 — proved decisive. Though nearly 40 years have passed, “it still looks absolutely beautiful now,” Amberg notes.
Leather banquette seating by Bill Amberg Studio in 80 Charlotte St, for Derwent London with MAKE Architects | Photography by David Cleveland
Left: Leather-clad staircase by Bill Amberg Studio in Paris Apartment by Dora Hart | Photo by Vincent Leroux | Right: Leather walls and pocket doors by Bill Amberg Studio in Orset Terrace, London, United Kingdom
Today, the studio’s ethos is simple but radical: you design at the bench. “Sori Yanagi had a principle of designing through making,” Amberg said. “That’s the foundation of my principles now.” A drawing sparks the idea; prototypes test its truth; the hand resolves what the paper cannot. This cycle — iterative but physical — explains the studio’s unique ability to inextricably unite architectural thinking with craft.
Through this approach, leather exceeds ornament, becoming an intelligent surface. The hides, vegetable-tanned in specialist Northern European tanneries, undergo a process that is deliberately slow: bark, water, patience. Amberg avoids plasticized finishes that alter the color but smother the texture in the process. You can pigment it, he warns, “but you are disguising all of the character, all of the grain.” Instead, he favors aniline dyeing, with which “you get a gorgeous depth of color, a gorgeous nuance of material.”
That commitment forces the supply chain toward higher welfare practices. “A happy cow has beautiful skin,” Amberg says. Imperfections cannot hide beneath coatings; provenance is visible. Variations in tone and structure, as well as varying depths to the grain, are further influenced by which parts of the animal hide — flank, shoulder — are used. “You start to think about that like a joiner would think about different grains of wood,” he remarks, hinting at an architectural reading of his material.
Leather walls and doors by Bill Amberg Studio for Lever House by Marmol Radzinger, New York City, New York | Photo by Nick Chard
Left: Leather bench seat in aniline dyed shrunken bull leather by Bill Amberg Studio, Derwent London | Right: Leather bench seat upholstered in red aniline upholstery leather with twin saddle stitch detailing by Bill Amberg Studio, Southampton Row, Derwent London
Digital consumption has changed our culture’s expectations for architectural space. In a context where photogenic qualities are prized above all else, the material’s nuances feel almost oppositional. Leather carries sound differently; it emits a scent; it offers a tactility that resists the sanitizing tendencies of the contemporary world. It is also an investment that is meant to last generations. Spaces warm up while calming down; they deepen in character, changing over time as the leather gracefully ages.
Reverence for the material lends itself naturally to sustainable practices. Since a premium is put on the animal’s husbandry (they source from some of the highest welfare livestock on the planet), scraps of aniline hide are considered raw material rather than a discard: “We keep all of our waste.” Offcuts are used in clamped belts, while experiments are underway to set smaller remnants into a terrazzo-like surface set in bio-resin. A desk in the studio was made this way: “It feels gorgeous,” Amberg gushes, as his hand grazes the surface.
Though its been larger at times, the workshop remains intentionally small, currently manned by just twelve craftspeople. Projects rely on trusted joiners and metalworkers, but the leatherwork remains in-house, built from early involvement. “I like to come in very early,” Amberg explains, “when somebody is thinking about using leather or thinking about that as a possibility within the palette of materials.” The team examines context, adjacent materials and junctions, using prototypes to test every transition. Craft becomes architectural detailing.
The studio thrives in partnerships with architects that are based on collaboration and mutual admiration, where “you can build ideas together.” Fabrication unfolds in London; installation reaches globally, with recent work spanning continents: leather walls in Miami; a new commission in Nevada; past projects in Nashville; furniture collaborations in Brooklyn and the U.K.
Leather staircase by Bill Amberg Studio for a private residence, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom | Photo by David Cleveland
Left: Leather Inglenook by Bill Amberg Studio for the Leathersellers’ Hall | Photo by David Cleveland | Right: Leather wall and paneling by Bill Amberg Studio for the Leathersellers’ Hall | Photo by David Cleveland
The argument for leather in architecture often defaults to luxury. (Can you imagine anything more sumptuous than the feeling of walking down a set of leather steps barefoot?) Yet Amberg counters with something more democratic: daily ritual. “Our senses need to be fed in a broader way,” as he put it, “the sensory fields are much more emotive than people imagine.”
For clients wary of surface area, he proposes targeted intensity. “If designers can’t use too much of our material, we always say, do the touch points,” he said. Handrails, pulls, banquettes, desk edges — the places where the body meets the building. A narrow band of leather can recalibrate an entire room.
For architects seeking interiors that feel richer without spectacle, the invitation is straightforward: treat leather as architecture, not an accent. Bring the maker in early and work alongside the craftsman, allowing them to extend and push detail. This is the type of collaboration that allows you to make something truly unique. Invite your clients to feel the difference.
For designers interested in detailing their next space with leather, investigate future collaborations with Bill Amberg Studio by clicking here.
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