A garden for work. WOHA architecture studio by Antonio Maciá

Description of project by Antonio Maciá

The study project is based on the landscaped patios that form part of the traditional housing in the rural surroundings of Elche in which predominates the vegetation and the earthy coloured materials like pieces of terracotta, ground or mortar pavements that use the surrounding land.

The designed space is the result of propose an “inner landscaped patio” that attends as the base to add, in a harmonic form, a series of mini projects: the planters, the work table, the installations, the closet, the ceramic wall and the bathroom.

The first of them contemplates the placement of a series of longitudinal planters situated on the perimeter of the local that has natural illumination and that configure the garden of this “inner patio”. This space confers, to the designed space, of a changing character as it is configured with a living “material”, which grows and change it with the passage of time.

Direct conversation, indirect, isolation, closeness, separation or different levels of the visual relationship between the people that forms a team, define the premises of the working space. The answer to these conditions could lead to the design of individual pieces that respond to each one of them, however, the proposal tries to unify them and proposes the design of a single table. The design of the table includes a series of natural plants that allow sifting the visual relations between the members of the team that use it.

The planters need a series of ducts that allow them to take the drip irrigation installation and the table needs the proper artificial lighting: the third mini-project appears.

Two layers of sinuous geometry separated from the blind longitudinal wall of the room define a storage area. The first one is made of pine strips and the second is formed by a curtain of white thread. Both layers intersect giving longitudinal continuity to the workspace and allow to assess the degree of transparency of the material that is displayed, it insinuates or hides valuing, therefore, what is shown, models ..., and what not, materials and documents or the service area.

The ceramic wall of the meeting room is resolved by a wall in which the bricks, placed at 90⁰, the curvature of their shapes and the use of carpets in the back and pavement of the room so that they favour the acoustic conditions of this subspace without needing to isolate it spatially at 100%.

Finally, the service area is hidden behind the thread layer and defined by an office and a bathroom.

The design of each of these mini-projects and their addition does not define the designed workspace on their own, but rather their correct interrelation which allows obtaining a more complex project that directly affects the user of the space, on the way of perceiving it, a slowly changing space, about the concentration and distension of the work team, about the environment, about the smell, ...