studio culture the secret life of a graphic design studio

Universal Design Studio, the London-based practice behind the interior design overhaul, anchored the interior influences to Tintagel House’s previous life as a Met Police building. Interiors inspired by ‘The Secret Life’ of Tintagel House The material palette of facing brick and glazed tiles of the new façade references the original concept of the building, as well the site’s history of pottery and glazed ceramic production, most notably the presence of the Vauxhall Pottery, active in the area between the 17th-19th centuries. The relationship between the external open space and the interior of the building is mediated by the introduction of two-storey colonnades, giving civic character to the previously introverted lower levels of Tintagel House, while creating a sense of enclosure with external terraces along the riverside for members’ use. The majority of the existing top floor plant has been removed and the elegant ‘floating canopy’ roof converted as office space alongside a rooftop bar and terrace, optimising the building’s prominent riverside location and spectacular views across the river of East and West London. The larger floor plates are better suited to open-plan, flexible layouts and can be easily accommodated or reconfigured over time, future-proofing the building. This new extension allows for generous communal spaces where the building’s occupants can meet, share facilities and interact with the wider community, a fundamental aspect in TOG’s approach to the provision of co-working space. The expansion of the ground and first floors has activated the building’s frontage, engaging both visually and physically with the public space around the building to create a welcoming and open approach. Taking a sustainable approach, the project has expanded and improved the existing office accommodation with the creation of spacious communal areas in the new extension at ground and first floor levels, in addition to the conversion of the panoramic top floor. Stanton Williams has transformed the existing 12-storey building into a flexible office setting, designed to cater for a variety of work styles. It is a different idea of the web, which we might call slow web.Ī flexible setting that maximises the unique riverside location banners, pop-ups or other distracting noise. No 'click me,' 'tweet me, 'share me,” 'like me.' No advertising. Behind all this there is the certainty that we can do better than the fast, distracted web we know today, where the prevailing business model is: 'you make money only if you manage to distract your readers from the contents of your own site.' With divisare we want to offer the possibility, instead, of perceiving content without distractions. A long, patient job of cataloguing, done by hand: image after image, project after project, post after post. Every Collection in our Atlas tells a particular story, conveys a specific viewpoint from which to observe the last 20 years of contemporary architecture.

Our model was the bookcase, on whose shelves we have gathered and continue to collect hundreds and hundreds of publications by theme.

So we began to build divisare not vertically, but horizontally. May be because we wanted to distinguish divisare from the web that is condemned to a sort of vertical communication, always with the newest architecture at the top of the page, as the 'cover story,' 'the focus.'Ĭontent that was destined, just like the oh-so-new architecture that had just preceded it a few hours earlier, to rapidly slide down, day after day, lower and lower, in a vertical plunge towards the scrapheap of page 2.

Studio culture the secret life of a graphic design studio