Structure workplace Studio Wok has reworked a disused technical constructing at QuadroDesign‘s headquarters in northern Italy into an artist residency, with dwelling and sleeping areas accommodated in its unusually formed roof.
Milan-based Studio Wok redesigned the headquarters for tapware model QuadroDesign in 2022 and was subsequently requested to supervise this second section, overhauling an space of the encircling grounds.
The centrepiece of the venture is a petite cabin, initially used to accommodate electrical infrastructure for the manufacturing facility situated close to Lake Orta in Italy’s Piedmont area.
Enrico and Elena Magistro, who inherited the corporate from their mother and father, needed the constructing to echo the identical pared-back type and impartial palette used for his or her redesigned places of work and showroom.
Positioned in a nook of the positioning, surrounded by greenery, the cabin now accommodates a pliant area that can be utilized for business occasions in addition to for internet hosting resident artists.
The unique form and construction of the cabin have been retained however its dimensions of simply three by 9.5 metres have been unsuited to the proposed home features.
Studio Wok proposed extending upwards into the present roof area, which reaches a top of eight metres and was seemingly created to permit warmth from electrical equipment to flee by means of a window on the apex.
“The inner area, slender and developed in top, will not be standard for a house – the truth is, it was designed to accommodate different features,” architect Nicola Brenna advised Dezeen.
“It was very stimulating to implement a ‘domestication’ course of and make it appropriate for dwelling.”
The cabin, which was most not too long ago used as a warehouse and gear shed, was stripped again and inside partitions have been eliminated to create a flexible open-plan room on the bottom ground.
Openings on this degree have been reorganised and enlarged to create an enhanced reference to the outside, significantly when the newly put in sliding steel doorways are retracted.
Constructed-in joinery alongside the room’s rear wall helps a settee and incorporates two steps that join with a steel staircase resulting in the higher ranges.
A wall of cupboards on the reverse finish of the area conceals a door resulting in a bathe room and WC that was added so the constructing can be utilized for momentary lodging.
The 2 mezzanine ranges include extra intimate areas together with a sleeping space situated on a newly constructed picket platform above the kitchen.
A second set of stairs results in a petite seating space, housed in an current concrete walkway close to the highest of the roof. Right here, Studio Wok put in a straightforward picket bench that receives pure illumination from the close by window.
All through the inside, the studio utilised a minimal materials palette to create what the founders describe as an “virtually sacred area”.
A collection of outside areas related by a concrete slab was launched as a part of the venture, with a pergola positioned perpendicular to the cabin housing an outside kitchen and eating space.
The pergola is constructed from tubular galvanised metal profiles, with 5 spans spaced 2.6 metres aside from each other. Two of the spans are lined with a light-weight corrugated steel roof that shelters the custom-made stone and steel kitchen counter.
The ultimate intervention is a petite pool that’s partly sunken into the earth. The monolithic development is clad with anthracite stone to echo the amount of the kitchen and create a seating space that additionally defines the boundary of the landscaped zone.
Studio Wok was based in 2012 by Brenna along with Marcello Bondavalli and Carlo Alberto Tagliabue. The studio adopts an artisanal strategy to its tasks, crafting options that reply to every website’s distinctive setting, materiality, lightweight and ambiance.
Earlier works by Studio Wok embody a bakery and wine bar in Milan that includes a matcha-green counter and the transformation of a uncared for barn close to Verona into a rustic house.
