Mezzanine

Jávri Lodge is a boutique hotel situated right on the border of the wilderness in Saariselkä Finnish Lapland,. The building used to be Finland longest serveing president Urho Kekkonen´s skiing hideout hosting such guests as royalty, superpower leaders, even the Shah. In the year 2017 the Lodge was expanded with new Main entrance, Dining hall and four new hotelrooms – With three copper glad building volymes. In front of and on top of the old building. The guests of Jávri Lodge spend their days in various outdoor activities. Thats why the hotel is designed to function as warm and cosy refuge where you rest, relax and enjoy culinaristic experiences after an active day spent in the wilderness. Marc Goodwin D... More

Building a cultural space in Beaumont-Hague, in Cotentin, means to integrate an architectural project that takes benefits from the landscape qualities of this piece of peninsula. On the shore, sunken roads are planted of wooded hedges that protects from the wind, and becomes vegetal vaults to filter the light over time. These landscape elements are secular forms from the site culture but also inspiring spaces that can be employed for the design. The cultural space is a compact block 43m large and 11m high. We appreciate the changing play of the facade, alternating presence and lightness. This versatile building combines program, urban scale, music and nature. Inside, sustainability and function are emphasized. We are « digging »... More

It’s a cold February morning and two architects visit a dark, dank and rather unsatisfying office | industrial unit as a potential first studio for a fledgling practice. Having laid empty for 2 years it wasn’t attracting the attention that the landlord wished but beneath the shoddy interior there was hope, there was potential. Here we outline the project that became the wr-ap studio. Ben Tynegate An approach of less is more was adopted. All internal walls were removed, clumsy load bearing walls to support an inefficient mezzanine were removed. Outdated and unhygienic kitchen area and toilet facilities were removed. Yet not all was lost – the existing timber staircase was retained for reuse in the new configuration. T... More

EXISTING Barn B is a renovation project, converting an existing flint barn into a series of open living spaces. The barn is situated amongst a cluster of agricultural buildings which together form a sheltered courtyard high upon a hill.   Caption Prior to works commencing, the interior of the main barn featured exposed solid stone walls that supported four timber trusses. Natural daylight filled into the barn from high level gable end windows. Meanwhile, two arched external doorways cut through the central axis of the barn, connecting the sheltered courtyard on one side to the countryside on the other. Caption BRIEF The brief was to renovate this historic barn to introduce a new kitchen, dining hall, sitting room and mezz... More

Inspired by Yale School of Management’s reinvention of business school education and pioneering integrated curriculum, the Edward P. Evans Hall combines world-class teaching facilities with inspirational social spaces. The project unites Yale’s faculty departments in a single location for the first time and brings a high level of transparency to the traditionally enclosed college courtyard, creating a green heart for the campus community, which is visible throughout the school. Embracing the wider campus, the transparent façade opens the building up to Whitney Avenue, making visible the staircases on either side of the entrance and showcasing the School’s activities. The classrooms are contained within sixteen doub... More

The work commissioned was to renovate a small house located in the historic center of Follonica. The height limits and the stringent constraints to which the property is subjected have led to a calibrated work of double height of the internal floors and the study of new sources of natural light that do not impact on the facades. We immediately imagined exploiting the quality of the space by working inside the volume, whose limit is represented by the pitched roof, enhancing it and making it visible from every observation point of the house. Two main beams define the space of the small mezzanine and with a game of joints they support a secondary structure that frees the ridge of the roof from any structural element allowing it to maintain it... More

The 19th century Squero, on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, is now home to an auditorium for 200 people, managed by the Giorgio Cini Foundation. The original building, in masonry, measures about 28.70 m by 17.70 m and is dated between 1830 and 1879; the reference model is that of the squeri of the Arsenale, therefore an open building, with arches on the main sides and large roof supported by wooden trusses. The restoration works of 1952 had radically changed the nature of the squero, transforming it into a closed building, inside which a reinforced concrete mezzanine and a thermal power station had been built. The project recovers the spatiality of the original squero, emptying the interior and freeing the fronts. The new... More

This barn is located in the village of Ayent, in a rural setting. For centuries, this building has fulfilled these agricultural functions. Nowadays, a family decides to transform it into a home. The challenge was to keep the original gasoline while meeting current needs. By offering a fully glazed southern facade, we have highlighted the original construction. This contrast allows the interior spaces to be bathed in light. Inside, it was essential to keep as much of the original spirit as possible. The result is a marriage of stone, wood and metal that combines modernity with history. More

Occupying the third floor of a six-story, mixed-use building in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, this project centered on how to maximize efficiencies (including budgetary constraints) for this technology start up while accommodating the existing office culture. Coming from a much smaller space, the firm had developed a pattern of work characterized by an unstructured work environment. The design focuses on creating a neutral background and armature in which the firm can shift and shape to their needs, including the repurposing of existing office furniture. The 9,068-square-foot space includes a 2,000 square-foot mezzanine, which the company uses for flex and breakout space. Design elements, including prominent integration of the... More

BW transforms historic Harella House in London’s Clerkenwell into highly desirable Cat A office space BW: Workplace Experts has sensitively refurbished Harella House on Goswell Road in Clerkenwell. In total, six floors of lettable Cat A office space have been created for Chait Investment Corporation, within a characterful building, which now has three new terraced areas.   Harella House dates back to the 1930s, starting out as a garment factory for Harella Clothing Manufacturers. This enterprising firm was famous in its day for producing garments in a wider range of women’s sizes. The 55,000 sq ft building has large Crittall windows, which were intended to create natural light filled spaces that could accommodate large i... More

Khidmah New Headquarters - Yas MallAbu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates FIRM: M+N ArchitectureTYPE: Commercial › Office Shopping Mall STATUS: BuiltYEAR: 2019SIZE: 25,000 sqft - 100,000 sqftBUDGET: $1M - 5M The project consists of the full interior design of the new Khidmah / Provis Headquarters located on the 1st floor of Yas Mall, Abu Dhabi. The unit extends on three levels, with the main entrance at 1st floor (shop front), the main space at 2nd floor (reachable by internal escalators and elevator), and the board meeting room on the mezzanine level.The new Headquarters accommodate more than 200 employees over around 2,800 sqm of Platinum LEED certified offices.The design makes full use of the exceptional internal height of 5,35m a... More

BURO.Space is the headquarters of an international media company Buro 24/7 in Kazakhstan. The project pushes the limits and understanding of a traditional office as a place to work in, to a multifunctional space for holding events, public talks, film screenings and photoshoots, making Buro even closer to its audience and to the public.  By introducing a mezzanine level, we managed to increase the usable floor area and add auxiliary spaces to the program, exceeding the brief requirements. The program includes various working, gathering and relaxation spaces, as well as a central theatre stage for talks and performances.  The whole space is designed to be open, transparent and interconnected, with constant circulation of people, i... More

Our response to the competition brief is to see the observatory as a theatre; where the roles of the observer vs observed are often in flux. Within the observatory theatre sits the sky lounge which is a freestanding volume of programmatic spaces ‘submerged’ into a man-made pool at the entrance of the castle. This move seeks to enhance the spatial quality of the new volumes while providing reflections of night sky into the interiors. From the outside, the sky lounge mimics a stage. It rejects stability in favour of movement, and rates delight over simplicity. The scenes of activities taking place across the divided interior spaces seem interconnected, and yet private.   At the end of the mezzanine restaurant enclosure, the... More

The “Sympathy Apartment” is a 44m² duplex located in Brasilia, Brazil. The owners are a friendly and receptive young couple who love to cook and gather friends at home. They asked us to rethink the apartment’s spaces to fit all the equipment and furniture they wished to have. Ampleness and integration are the words that describe the new home. In the original design, the mezzanine occupied half of the upper floor. We decided to extend it to the end, increasing its area and leaving the lower floor entirely for social use.   Through the proposed integration between the floors, the project optimizes and proposes different uses for each one. The choice of timeless materials and colors such as wood, gray and fendi to... More