“When we meet clients with strong personal ideas about their life, we are able to be even more creative, and the result of the project becomes both more personal and characteristic at the same time,” said Rune, 50. “We make some kind of bond, which feels like their apartment also become ours.”

Claesson Koivisto Rune was founded in 1995, shortly after the trio graduated from Konstfack, the prestigious Stockholm design school where they met. There they became fast friends, often closing bars with late-night conversations about architecture, design and music. Today the three partners think of each other almost as brothers. Eero Koivisto, 56, and Marten Claesson, 44, even look something alike; both have shaved heads and dress only in dark clothes.

CKR’s breakout project was the Sfera Building in Kyoto, Japan, completed in 2003. This tall, narrow “culture house” for the Japanese product designer Shigeo Mashiro contains three restaurants, an art gallery and a shop. It is situated in Kyoto’s traditional district, Gion, and alludes in its design to the bamboo sunscreens that shade the area’s ancient wood houses. In CKR’s version, the shade, made from perforated titanium, becomes the facade of the building. Light streams in to form transfixing patterns that are shaped like the leaves of cherry trees. In 2006, the project was selected for the Biennale of Architecture in Venice, launching CKR’s international profile.