Two Sheds (AU)

Studio Didea redeveloped these offices for a finance consulting company on the tenth floor of a modern building near Piazza Duomo in Milan. The client’s request was to upgrade the venue both to respond to functional needs and to highlight the new identity of the society, whose team is composed mostly of young professionals. The office used to be divided in small, independent rooms, according to a traditional concept of working space. Studio Didea has reinterpreted and redesigned it according to contemporary trends. Starting with the need for an uninterrupted floorplan, a wooden volume was created to envelop and hide the central pillars and to serve as a spatial partition: on one side an open office with thirty workstations, on the other, five rooms composed of two CEO suites, a seminar room, a recruiting room, and, at the end of the corridor, a meeting room. In line with the client’s request, the architects used a few, select elements to define the colour palette and to underline the minimalism of the project. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls divide the space and accentuate the natural lighting. The false ceiling is made of sound-absorbent material, with a white colour that blends visually with the rest of the interior. All surface finishes and furniture are black and white. For the entrance and central volume, the architects have chosen a warm-coloured durmast wood. A single domotic system controls the temperature, lights, and solar screens to make all technological devices easily accessible. The temperature adjusts to the interior’s microclimatic conditions depending both on the number of people inside and on the weather outside. The lights, together with the solar screens, are self-regulating, responding to the amount of natural light. These devices, combined with added thermal insulation in the outer walls, help users in the daily management of the space, and contribute to the overall energy efficiency of the office. These advanced technologies were integrated with the final design of the office in mind, so that they remain barely visible.