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Canadian practice D’Arcy Jones Architects has mixed modern additions with historical quirks inside its self-designed studio, which is housed within a century-old building in Vancouver. More
New York studio GRT Architects has transformed a turn-of-the-century Brooklyn townhouse into a home and studios for an artist couple, featuring a mix of functioning studios and eclectic interiors. More
Ortraum Architects has built an asymmetric studio called 12 in the garden of a house in Helsinki, Finland, to provide its owners with space to compose music and make ceramics.The structure was commissioned by a couple who wanted an external space to work from home, beside their existing 1960s home in the Jollas neighbourhood.
It features two contrasting storeys that Ortraum Architects has set askew, giving rise to a sculptural form and two individual workspaces inside for the couple.
Ortraum Architects’ 12 studio has two storeys set askew
The 12 studio, which has been shortlisted in the Dezeen Awards in the small workspace interior category, measures 72-square-metres and is complete with a kitchen and bathroom.
While providing individual studio space for the couple, it is designed to be easily adapted into a guest house or even become a home for the client’s children in the future.
The studio is in the garden of a house in Helsinki
“The client couple needed two main spaces, a ceramics workshop and a music-composing studio,” said the studio. “The massing is visually divided into two levels, reflecting the two different building functions,” it continued.
“The plan also needed to be flexible enough to function additionally as a guest house and future home for one of the two children in the family, so bathroom and kitchen spaces were included.”
A ceramic studio is on the ground floor
The material palette of 12 is deliberately pared-back, with its cross-laminated-timber (CLT) structure left exposed internally and externally. On the exterior, this will turn grey with time to help the structure blend in with its surroundings.
Its entrance is marked by large glass doors that face the existing home, sheltered by a small cantilevered corner of the second floor.
A hidden black staircase has storage in its treads
This entrance opens into the ceramics studio on the ground floor, which is complete with a small bathroom.
A black wooden staircase that leads to the first floor is concealed behind a wall and features treads that double as storage units.
The building contains a music studio upstairs
Above, the first floor contains the music studio. Its angular form was developed to help enhance the acoustics of the space and make it suitable for recording music.
This space is complete with two large windows that open towards a neighbouring forest, alongside a small balcony and gallery level for use as an extra lounge area.
The music studio has an angular form to enhance its acoustics
Ortraum Studio’s goal for 12 was for it to “be a best practice example for environmentally friendly construction and infill projects in a suburban context”.
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For this reason, its size was dictated by an existing concrete foundation from an old garage, avoiding the need for new and obtrusive groundwork, while its structure was prefabricated using CLT to avoid waste and speed up construction time.
It has also been developed to facilitate natural ventilation and is powered by solar panels and heated using a ground source heat pump of the main home.
A small balcony looks out to the neighbouring houses
As part of the project, Ortraum Architects also built a small playhouse for the client’s children, which is also made of CLT and is tied to a pine tree in the garden.
Named the Birdhouse, it features heart-shaped windows and is modelled on pictures that the children drew of their “dream house”.
A playhouse sits next to the studio
Ortraum architects is a small Finnish design studio headed up by architect Martin Lukasczyk. In 2017, it completed a family home in Finland that has a number of child-friendly features including a trapeze, a climbing wall and a hammock.
Photography is by Marc Goodwin.
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New York architecture studio Worrell Yeung has transformed historic factory buildings in Brooklyn Navy Yard into multi-use workspaces and artist studios featuring time-worn brick walls and weathered beams and columns.The adaptive reuse project involved remodelling 77 Washington, a six-storey former masonry factory built in the 1920s, and four other buildings situated around on the property.
It is located at the corner of Washington Avenue and Park Avenue in Brooklyn Navy Yard, a former shipbuilding complex between the Dumbo and Williamsburg neighbourhoods undergoing regeneration.
Worrell Yeung drew from the area’s historic architecture and the design of early 20th-century New York warehouses to update the 38,000-square-foot (3530.3-square-metre) multi-use art and office space.
“The existing buildings were so rich with history and layered with texture that we wanted our design to highlight these found conditions while also updating to accommodate new uses and new programs,” said co-principal Max Worrell.
A six-storey brick structure occupies the centre of the property, with a cluster of three one-storey buildings situated on its south end and a single garage unit located on the opposite side.
On the main building the brick facade was left untouched, while the sides of the building are painted white.
Storefronts situated along the street level were restored to house artist and photography studios. Each of the exteriors is painted dark blue and is fronted with large windows that flood natural light into the interiors.
The low-lying structures are connected by a central courtyard filled with gravel and plants laid out by landscape firm Michael van Valkenburgh Associates. To form the outdoor patio and bike storage area the studio removed a roof that previously covered the space.
In the garden three solid oak logs form a series of benches. Over the past decade a local shipbuilder gathered the reclaimed wood used for the seating following a number of storms in the region.
Inside the materials and patterns are evocative of old Brooklyn factories and warehouses. The floors are covered with concrete and metal diamond plates.
Macro Sea turns abandoned Brooklyn warehouse into New Lab co-working space
Exposed brick walls coated with layers of old paint pair with structural wood columns and beams in the open-plan spaces, which include meeting rooms, a small kitchenette and a large lobby area.
Brooklyn Navy Yard woodworker Bien Hecho repurposed timber floor joists from the building into a custom-built conference table and a bench.
Steel grids installed across the elevator shaft windows are visible from the building’s exterior and match the pattern on the translucent glass and plywood walls located in the lobby.
“These interventions are a nod to the aesthetics of storied factory buildings and Navy Yard warehouses, which historically featured grids in their sash windows, fencing, and ship docks,” added co-principal Jejon Yeung.
Worrell Yeung was founded in 2014 by Max Worrell and Jejon Yeung. The studio has completed a number of renovation projects in New York City, including a loft in Chelsea and an apartment inside Dumbo’s Clocktower building.
Other office projects in Brooklyn Navy Yard are a space for tech entrepreneurs located in a former warehouse renovated by New York developer Macro Sea and Marvel Architects and a new 16-storey co-working building by S9 Architecture.
Photography is by Naho Kubota.
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Designers Michael Godmer and Mathieu Turgeon’s home in Montreal features contemporary Danish pieces alongside oak, terracotta and marble. Located in the city’s Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood, the Victorian-era brick home was renovated by the couple to accommodate a design studio and residence for them and their two poodles. Completed in 1885, the residence has a slender width of 3.1 […] More
Translucent glass doors fold open to reveal the studio that architecture firm Estudio Nu has created inside a dental mechanics workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Estudio Nu had shared the Lerma workshop in the city’s Villa Crespo neighbourhood with an artist for years but wanted to update the facilities to accommodate more tenants. “Lerma started as […] More
