Few weeks ago American artist Dan Colen presented Karma, his first solo show in Italy. The exhibition, held at Massimo De Carlo, features the installation Oh Shit, a 15m long and 5m tall wooden structure that resembles a skateboard ramp and frames the painting Moments Like This Never Last (No. 2) through its large holes.  To develop and build the daring construction Dan Colen asked advise to studiometrico and Atelier LC. See few images of the installation after the break.

Berlin_los Angeles. A Tale Of Two (other) Cities has opened on the 12 of November at the Massimo De Carlo Gallery in Milan. The collective exhibition explores new trends in contemporary art through the work of young artists like Klara Liden, Josef Strau, Klaus Weber, Dan Rees, Kirstine Roepstorff, Maximilian Zentz Zlomowitz, Simon Fujiwara, Scott Olson, Frank Benson, Elad Lassry and Kaari Upson. studiometrico has designed a platform with two reading tables that allow visitors to browse through catalogs, books and magazine about the two cities.

The Project

The 4×5 m wooden platform divides the main exhibition space in two parts and features two reading tables (one for each city) and 8 small benches. The structure has been realized in MDF fibreboard panels that were pre-cutted according to given dimensions and quickly assembled on site.

the platform (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

The Construction

Once assembled, the platform, the reading tables  and the benches have been covered with a fibre glass wall covering to level and make uniform the surfaces. The material – called Gavatex – is produced by the Italian company Gavazzi and has been glued on the MDF panels and then painted with a warm grey color that matches the one of the concrete floor of the exhibition space.

The Opening

In December 2007 an Italian art dealer decided to expand his business in the prosperous land of Albion. He found the right location in the heart of London, and made a deal with an Irish man who owned the property. He then appointed us to develop a project to transform the 250 sqm building into a new contemporary art gallery. Then came The Crisis…

Click on the image to view the building as found

The existing building was organized on four floors (basement, ground, first, second and third) and divided in two blocks: the main one facing the street, and the rear one toward a courtyard surrounded by other houses. The split levels of the two parts of the building were connected by a steep staircase placed in the middle and inside the perimeter of the main block.

Situation plan (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

To make the building adapt to its future use, we needed more generous and regular rooms. To achieve a more flexible and open space – that was considered necessary to display art works – we proposed to demolish the existing staircase and to use the rear block to build a new and more relaxed one that could serve fewer, but bigger, rooms placed in the front.

Part of the brief was also to add a new storey to the building according to a planning permission that had been previously submitted and accepted by the authorities. This expansion of the building could enable the building to host a new office for the landlord as well. The art gallery would then occupy basement, ground, first and second floor while the office would use third and fourth floor.

The combination of these two activities within the same building provoked a logistic problem and an architectural challenge for us. The available space was limited, therefore the two functions could only be served by an unique circulation system. The two activities were not related, therefore the staircase, the corridors and the lobbies had to be treated as a common space and the thresholds to the ‘private’ areas had to be secure and controlled.

For these reasons our design proposal was organised around the new circulation system that, despite the reduced dimensions of the building, was conceived as an articulated sequence of corridors, lobbies, ramps and flights of stairs constantly switching angles: a winding pathway that vertically connected the different floors and horizontally separated the enclosed rooms assigned to the two different activities.

Plan 00-02 (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

A long corridor was necessary to reach the staircase from the entrance of the building on the ground floor, and even if this element reduced the width of the main exhibition room on the street side, we achieved a sequence of relatively generous rooms – both on this and on the other levels – that could be used as small exhibition spaces and that presented always different proportions and heights.

Plan 03-04 (click to open, then right-click to zoom)

On the second floor the ‘public’ staircase reached a lobby that gave access to the top floor of the gallery and, through a small corridor, to the last rotated flight of stairs leading up to the third floor occupied by the office of the landlord. The fourth floor was conceived as a mezzanine facing the lower level and the street in front of the building.

Section a-a (click above the image to open)

Section b-b (click above the image to open)

The different parts of the building have been treated, in our proposal, with different materials and details. The exhibition rooms of the gallery had been conceived as neutral and clean environment, while the ‘common spaces’ and the more private rooms -both of the gallery and the office – have been characterized with the use of warmer, domestic finishings.

The entrance from the street

The entrance from the street

Gallery – ground floor

Gallery – ground floor

Gallery – first floor

Gallery – second floor

Gallery – second floor

Office – third and fourth floors

Since we have presented our first design proposal – which consists in the materials showed here – the development of this project has been long, complicated and contorted. The goals that our client (the Italian art dealer) and ourselves were sharing with great enthusiasm have been made impossible by the way the Landlord had carried on the operation. The British local architects – that we had involved – acted in a very ambiguous and ungrateful way and even now – that this project is ‘dead’ – they are trying to promote themselves with the feathers they have been stealing…

It might also be because the so-called ‘economical crisis’ that this very good opportunity to work in England has vanished.  Anyway we consider this project another fundamental bit of ‘good experience’, and we are very happy to disclose – as we always do – the outcome of our work.

Design Team:

Lorenzo Bini
Francesca Murialdo
Valentina Cocco

Note: the works of Maurizio Cattelan, Simone Berti, Yan Pei Ming, Elmgreen & Dragset, Sam Samore, Rudolf Stingel, Steven Parrino, Gelitin and others that are featured in our photo-montages have nothing to do with the real facts but have been captured on the web and used just because we sincerely admire them.

A year ago we had the great opportunity to be introduced to a famous painter. He needed help to transform an old industrial space into his new, equipped, atelier. We took the task very seriously: we flew over to visit the building and receive his brief, we set up a deadline and we even started a language course to facilitate the communication with our new ‘potential’ client.
We worked intensively and we presented a consistent design proposal with architectural drawings, diagrams, collages and a 1:50 scale model.
After a neverending wait for a longed-for phone call that has never arrived, we have now decided that this is another lost project.
This painful achievement enables us to publish, after more than a year, the outcome of our work.
Places, names and details about this project are deliberately omitted in order to preserve the privacy of our ‘missed’ client…

Architectural drawings

The design proposal was first described through a set of architectural drawings in 1:200 scale featuring the new elements inserted and organised into the existing space. Each element hosts one or more functions as requested by the client’s brief.

Lower level plan

Upper level plan

Longitudinal sections

Cross sections

Collages

The new elements were conceived as small buildings and the existing industrial environment was treated as an architectural landscape. The atmosphere and the character of the transformed space were depicted and communicated in a number of collages. Some collages were manipulations based on the actual photographs of the building…

the canvas archive

toward the entrance of the atelier

toward the canvas archive

… while other images, based on a simple digital 3d model, were completely ‘artificial’ and much more abstract, but still very useful to describe more precisely the space inside, outside, above and around the new constructed elements of our project.

the mezzanine above the canvas archive

inside the suspended atelier for watercolors

interior view of the kitchen

the garden toward the artist’s office

the garden toward the kitchen

inside the artist’s office

toward the garden

Physical model

A 1:50 scale model has been built to allow ourselves to understand the proportions of the new inserted elements and their effects and implications on the natural light inside the building. The maquette has also proved to be very useful during the discussions with the client that followed the presentation of our design proposal.

Design team

Lorenzo Bini, Francesca Murialdo, Marco Di Nallo, Roberta Pezzulla, Dora Pugliese, Emanuela Ragazzoni