Twenty-five years of practice — custom homes, commercial buildings, and institutional projects including the largest forensic anthropology laboratory in the world — shaped how the studio works today. Benjamin Studio was founded in 2023 to practice at a scale where that experience reaches the client directly, without the layers a larger firm requires.

Ben McRae grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where an A-frame house on the Oregon coast and a childhood spent outdoors gave him an early interest in how buildings meet the places they sit in. He studied at the University of Oregon before transferring to the University of Arizona, studying engineering alongside architecture and graduating in 1998 with a Bachelor of Architecture — a background that still shapes how the studio draws and coordinates its work.