OOA’s 2025 Holiday Gift Guide
Architecture folks don’t ease into the holidays — they crash-land into them. Final reviews, wild deadlines, and plotters acting like they have personal vendettas.
So we made a 2025 gift guide for the people living that life. Smart, useful, sanity-saving stuff for the designers and students you care about.
Here are 22 ideas worth gifting:
Disclaimer: all products featured were independently selected by our team and are not sponsored or promotional. However, if you purchase something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Because round measuring spoons are for people who don't obsess over geometry.
These flat, stackable polygons will make you feel like you're doing something vaguely architectural while making cookies at 2am instead of finishing that rendering.
They nest perfectly, take up zero drawer space, and honestly might be the most successful space-planning you'll do all year..
These aren't just paper clips—they're tiny sculptural objects that happen to hold paper together.
Your Post-it notes deserve better than those bent-out-of-shape freebies from the supply closet.
Treat yourself to some bougie office supplies. You earned it after that last deadline.
It's a silent, silver, beautiful cry for help.
When human validation fails and your design concept is being torn apart in critique, there's this little yellow duck. Its expression never changes.
It never questions your cantilevers. It never suggests you "simplify the massing."
It just floats there, offering the steady, silent support you need to make it through another rendering revision.
Honestly, it might be the healthiest relationship you'll have this year.
Stop.
Just stop googling rough openings for door sizes at 3am for the ten-thousandth time.
This subscription is basically buying back your dignity and those 47 browser tabs you have open with conflicting information about counter heights.
It's the adult equivalent of admitting you don't have everything memorized, which is honestly the most mature decision you'll make this year.
For when you need to communicate your feelings during design review but your professionalism won't let you say it out loud.
Let your jewelry do the talking while you nod thoughtfully at suggestions to "make it pop" or "add more biophilia."
It's the architectural equivalent of a stress ball, except you can wear it to client meetings.
We're not saying it's professional.
We're saying it's necessary.
Make your breakfast structurally sound and to code with waffles that have proper coursing and load-bearing capacity.
This is what happens when your professional identity completely consumes your personality—even your food needs to reference the built environment.
Le Corbusier said a house is a machine for living.
This is a machine for eating buildings.
Go on, play with your food.
The mechanical pencil has entered its construction era, and honestly, it's thriving.
Perfect for marking deep holes, scribing materials, or just looking like you know what you're doing on the jobsite.
Comes with a built-in sharpener because apparently we can't be trusted with standalone sharpeners anymore.
It's giving "I can sketch a detail and actually build it," which is either aspirational or delusional depending on your skill set or how much sleep you got that night.
Finally, work boots that won't make you look like you're cosplaying as a construction worker.
These are for the architects who need OSHA-compliant footwear but refuse to sacrifice their entire aesthetic identity.
Yes, they're expensive.
Yes, you could buy cheaper steel toes.
But will those cheaper ones make you feel like you could plausibly be featured in Dwell while punch-listing?
Exactly.
It's a tape dispenser that costs more than your student loan payment, and you're going to buy it anyway.
Why?
Because it's machined aluminum, weighs more than your laptop, and makes the simple act of tearing tape feel like a meaningful design moment.
It's pure object fetishism, and we're not here to judge—we're here to enable.
Your desk deserves one sculptural anchor point, and this is it.
Ever wanted to draw your own Modulor Man but felt limited by Le Corbusier's specific proportions?
Now you can obsess over your own measurements and create a personalized system of proportions that no one else will ever use.
It's self-centered, it's navel-gazing, it's perfect. Know thyself, measure thyself, then make inexplicably specific furniture based on thyself.
Because if you're going to emotionally eat an entire pint of ice cream after your client rejects your fourth design iteration, you might as well do it with purpose-designed serveware.
These fit perfectly into standard pint containers and come in a curated color palette that makes your breakdown look intentional.
You're not eating your feelings.
You're indulging the experience.
Finally, a piece of flair that says what your internal monologue screams during every coordination meeting.
Wear it to silently communicate with other architects across the room, or when your client asks for 'just one more quick revision.'
Better yet, buy multiples - one for every time you've contemplated starting a goat farm instead of dealing with redlines.
More metal objects for your desk that serve basic functions but cost unreasonable amounts of money.
A pen holder, a tray, some organizational vessels—all machined, all minimal, all completely unnecessary yet absolutely essential.
Your desk is a composition, and these are the elements.
We're past pretending this is practical.
You deserve a little treat that could also double as a weapon, should you ever need it.
Fifty postcards featuring bold, graphic patterns that you'll never actually mail because they're too beautiful and postage is expensive and who even sends postcards anymore?
Instead, you'll pin them to your studio wall for "inspiration" or use them as impromptu color studies.
They're Scandinavian.
They're iconic.
And they're cheaper than therapy when you need to remember that design can be joyful.
It's a cup with confetti permanently suspended in resin, which means the party never stops and also never starts.
Perfect for the architect who wants their morning coffee ritual to have a sense of celebration while they contemplate another day of redlines.
The confetti is trapped forever, much like you in that review meeting that should have been an email.
At least your drinkware has escaped mediocrity.
Silicone coasters shaped like succulents for people who can't keep real succulents alive (we see you).
They're cute, they're practical, and they won't die from neglect when you're buried in a deadline.
Plus they're a subtle nod to all that "biophilic design" you keep putting in your presentations while your own workspace resembles a beige corporate hellscape.
Fake it till you make it.
Literally.
A tote bag that looks exactly like pink insulation foam, because apparently we've reached the point where construction materials are fashion accessories.
It's ridiculous, it's architecture-student-core, and it will absolutely start conversations.
Wear it to the jobsite for maximum confusion or to the grocery store to confuse literally everyone else.
Either way, you're making a statement.
What that statement is remains unclear.
For those who found the metal tape dispenser too industrial: here's the warm, organic alternative.
Same sculptural presence, same unnecessary luxury, different material palette.
Now you can have a beautiful tape dispenser that matches your Scandinavian minimalist aesthetic instead of your industrial brutalist phase.
Collect both and rotate them seasonally.
We won't judge because we do it too.
Want your water to hurt?
This portable carbonation bottle is for architects who've convinced themselves that suffering builds character, even in beverage form.
Why drink regular water like a normal person when you can carbonate it on-demand and feel the burn?
Perfect for staying hydrated during those marathon redline sessions where you need your water to match your emotional state: aggressive, slightly painful, and unnecessarily complicated.
It's hydration, but make it difficult.
20. Trace Paper Sticky Notes!
Finally, sticky notes with the same translucent, smudge-prone qualities as the trace paper you used in school!
Because apparently your to-do lists weren't illegible enough already.
These bring all the romance of hand-drafting to your daily reminders—terrible visibility, accidental smearing, and that satisfying crinkle.
Layer them infinitely to create what looks like a design process but is actually just procrastination with better production value.
Because you haven't seen actual daylight since the semester began.
This isn't just a night light - it's an architectural rebellion against your studio's fluorescent prison, simulating that warm solar glow you vaguely remember from your pre-architecture life.
Minimal enough to look intentional, while desperately trying to trick your circadian rhythms into thinking you have a normal sleep schedule.
Finally, a chance to experience that 'natural daylighting' you keep hearing about.
Quick bonus drop!
Not trying to be too in-your-face, but here’s something worth mentioning:
Out of Architecture: The Value of Architects Beyond Traditional Practice (or audiobook) is well worth a solid read—packed with real stories and practical advice for anyone rethinking their path.
