Wokr

Nestled in a quiet pocket within one of the busiest neighborhoods of the European capital, the project’s location as good as it was, proved to be a challenge all in itself. Within the plot there stood 2 buildings, one facing the street and a second one deep within the plot itself. It was within the footprint of the later where the intervention was set.
The client being the head of a relatively big interior design office wished to be involved in as many aspects of the design process as possible. The project itself was to be the office’s headquarters coupled with a hot seat styled workspace/café and his own private residence.
The access to the location itself already proved difficult given that the plot sits on a small mainly pedestrian road, this coupled with the fact that a first building had to be surpassed within the plot before reaching the actual construction site greatly limited the construction systems which could be chosen. However this proved to be in a way advantageous for it provided a starting point, effectively limiting with what could be challenged and what simply couldn’t be.

For these reasons the team chose as the whole project structure an advanced wooden frame technique which would be precut in a factory and later assembled on site. This proved beneficial in terms of logistics and hand labor as well as environmentally as the use of concrete, a high carbon material was replaced by wood, a carbon absorbing material, greatly reducing the overall project’s embodied energy.
Although the constraints set by the building authorities were not as strong as those mandated by the location, they proved to be many and quite tricky. One of the main constraints faced was the inability to increase the height of the perimeter walls. This meant a great deal of creativity had to be employed so as to find a compromise between this constraints whilst accommodating the extra volume demanded by the program.
Being that the facade to the street had such a strong presence which worked well with the project sought, the intervention at this level was kept to a minimum. The existing doors were treated and opened to the public, and the proper entrance to the semi-public space was pushed further back, creating a terrace to the street which works as a buffer.