Architecture studio room in a former brick factory: a long pale wooden worktable covered with small timber scale models of houses, tall steel-framed factory windows, soft daylight on a white plastered wall, no people

A small studio that builds in timber.

Four architects in Leipzig-Plagwitz, led by Jana Krüger. We design timber homes, attic conversions and small multi-family houses in cross-laminated timber.

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Woman architect seated at a studio table with small wooden scale models of houses in front of her, a large steel-framed factory window behind, soft daylight from the side

Jana Krüger leads the studio.

Jana is in the first conversation on every project and stays with it until the keys change hands. With four of us there is no hand-off to a team you have never met.

Her view of timber is plain. A wall of cross-laminated spruce is structure, surface and climate in one piece, so the drawing has to be honest: what you see in the model is what carries the roof.

That is why the studio stays small. Each building gets drawn carefully and by the people you talk to.

Write to Jana

The four of us

Four architects share one room and one long table. Everyone draws and everyone goes to site. This is how the work divides between us.

Four architects, two women and two men, standing around a long wooden studio table with timber scale models and rolls of drawings, brick wall and tall factory windows behind them, even daylight

Lead and first conversations: Jana Krüger listens to what you want to build, walks the plot or the attic with you and sets the direction of the design.
Design and models: Plans, sections and the wooden model on the table. You can pick up the model and turn it towards the window.
Structure and detail: Every panel joint, window reveal and service run is drawn with the engineer and the timber manufacturer before anything is cut.
Permits and site: The building application, the tenders and the weeks on site, from the foundation slab to the last coat of oil.

From first sketch to the day the panels arrive

Cross-laminated timber is cut in a factory to the millimetre. Once a panel is on the lorry it cannot be changed, so the thinking happens early. This is the order we work in.

Close-up of a pale spruce cross-laminated timber wall surface meeting a deep window reveal, visible grain and fine board joints, daylight raking across the wood

We start where the building will stand.

A garden plot, a roof space full of old beams or a gap between two brick houses. We look at the light, the neighbours and what is already there.

You get hand sketches and a first small model. They are quick and rough, and easy to change.

A design you can judge.

Plans, sections and a model at a scale where rooms read as rooms. Alongside them comes a cost estimate, so the design and the budget are decided together.

Once you agree, we prepare and submit the building application and see it through with the authority.

Every panel is drawn before it is cut.

Window openings, stair voids, cable routes and the position of each socket go into the panel drawings. The engineer and the manufacturer check them with us.

It is slow, careful work at the desk. It is also why the site is quiet and short.

A crane lowering a large pale cross-laminated timber wall panel with a cut window opening onto the ground floor of a house under construction, two carpenters in helmets guiding it, clear morning sky

The day the panels arrive.

A lorry, a crane and a crew of carpenters. Walls and floors are lifted into place in the order we drew them, and the shell stands in days. We are on site when it does.

Converted red brick factory building beside a canal with trees along the bank, tall industrial windows and a plain entrance door, calm water, overcast daylight

Our studio in Leipzig-Plagwitz

We work in a converted brick factory by the canal. The current models are on the table by the window, and there are samples of spruce panel you can put a hand on.

Come by and bring whatever you have: a site plan, photographs of the attic, or only an idea. Write or call first so one of us is at the table.

studio@holzwerk-architektur.de +49 341 5550 142 Start an enquiry