Constraint is the most underrated tool in design. March Studio built an entire identity out of it.
Young and ambitious, the architect Rodney Eggleston and the graphic designer Anne-Laure Cavigneaux run March Studio, a multidisciplinary design and architecture practice nestled in North Melbourne. Created in 2007, the studio set its focus firmly on two things: fun, and material efficiency.
Scarcity as a method
In the early years, when funds were low and time was tight, March Studio leaned on recycled materials and leftover packaging to complete its interior fit-outs. The most quoted example is an Aesop store in Paris, its interior assembled largely from product packaging and completed overnight with the help of local students. Even once money was less scarce, the studio kept reaching for similarly sourced, environmentally sound materials and processes. Eggleston grew skilled at designing to minimise shipping and handling — proof, as he likes to demonstrate, that it can be done, and done to spectacular effect.
Leaders, not bosses
What sets the studio apart is less visible than its joinery. Eggleston and Cavigneaux behave less like bosses than like leaders, running the practice on values of altruism, inclusivity and equality. They hand responsibility for projects to their colleagues, and that trust returns to them as appreciation, empowerment and respect — the kind of culture that quietly outlasts any single commission.
Why it matters more in 2026
What looked, in the late 2000s, like the charming resourcefulness of a studio without a budget now reads as a blueprint. Designing for minimal shipping, building from what already exists, treating waste as raw material — these are the exact disciplines the design world spent the following decade scrambling to relearn under the banner of sustainability. March Studio was practising it before it had a marketing department behind it. Necessity, it turns out, was an excellent teacher.