An unlimited guide assortment and a trusting friendship between designers and their consumer helped flip cramped ground-floor rooms right into a sun-filled, tranquil non-public studying room.
Six years in the past, Tao Liu and Chunyan Cai, co-founders of the Shanghai-based structure and inside design agency Atelier tao+c, designed an condominium for a consumer with whom they’ve since grow to be mates. On the time, the condominium temporary required designing area for the consumer’s huge, ever-increasing guide assortment.
In 2020, the consumer invited the designers to his new workplace situated in a Nineteen Eighties constructing on Gaoan Street in Xuhui District within the former French Concession. He requested the designers what he ought to do with the constructing’s empty floor flooring with its two small rooms and a glass home within the courtyard.
The designers steered remodeling the rooms into a personal studying area that may carry collectively the consumer’s workplace, his guide assortment, his crew and his mates.
The rooms had been small — the full completed measurement of the studying area is simply 76 sq. metres (818 sq.ft) — and the ceilings lwere ow, and there have been weight-bearing brick partitions that might not be taken down.
The ensuing areas are sun-filled and open however there are additionally non-public studying rooms, a pantry/tearoom and a washroom. The openness and fluidity are achieved by reconfiguring the area, but in addition by utilizing minimalist materials and color palettes.
Tao Liu and Chunyan Cai coated the glasshouse with a wooden ceiling into which they minimize one spherical and one sq. skylight. Oak bookshelves line the rooms and off-white travertine seating is roofed with blue-green cloth.
A triangular travertine construction conceals the present pillars within the center with two sides structured as bookshelves and one facet as a hearth.
The area can now be used for a number of functions from quiet, non-public studying and research to small conferences and occasions. – Tuija Seipell.
Photographs by Wen studio
