A modern office, linear and neutral, is converted into a home and made welcoming through a play of colors, coverings, and décor. Its unique structure, consisting of a narrow corridor, was the driving force behind the design project, turning a limitation into an opportunity. The goal was to enhance the areas and multiply the spaces through optical illusions based on targeted colors, mirrors, and wallpaper.

The space is transformed and divided, illuminated by large ribbon windows that fill the place with natural light. The intervention therefore aimed at enhancing the existing monochromatic and linear spaces which lent themselves adequately to achromatic and decorative play thanks to the play of volumes already present.

The kitchen is the heart of the house, enclosed in a chromatic “cube” that instills openness and sociability, thus generating a dynamic and multifunctional environment. It becomes the place to welcome and share, accompanied by dark chestnut wood, a color that increases energy and stimulates the appetite.

Color is used as an excellent tool for delimiting a space, dividing it, giving it an identity. By the choice of the correct color, it is possible to create moods and feelings and make sure that the environment we live in can influence our emotions.

The pine green of the living room, used in two shades, expresses regeneration and rebirth, urging us to breathe more deeply and instilling trust and security. It favors blood pressure reduction by stimulating the pituitary gland, which is ideal for the living area! The palette also includes the white color, which acts as a neutral canvas and contributes to lightening the environment by providing balance and serenity. Colors carry with them a universal message, fruit of cultural and historical evolution; their communicative capacity is very powerful.

Playing with solids and voids is a very interesting method to embellish an environment. In the bathroom, Chroma Studio has chosen to play with the wooden divider that, with its rectangular axes, gives an added value in terms of functionality, chromatic harmony, and dynamism. The bathroom is, by choice, the most restful space of the entire apartment, a place to abandon the tensions of the day and take our time.

Materials, colors, and textures have been chosen to help the reconnection with nature. The use of sage green infuses a feeling of balance and regeneration, associated with natural oak wood and the wallpaper “Exotic dream” by Londonart that reminds of pristine places. The design choice was to enhance the long walls of this bathroom in which one is reflected in the other. The left side holds the large Fenix and oak washbasin, separated from the sanitary area through the oak divider. This wall was imagined as a sort of chessboard, where the two-dimensional enamel was associated with the three-dimensional tiles “Biscuit” from 41zero42, creating vertical and horizontal sections through the use of wood. The large circular mirror reflects the fiberglass wallpaper that occupies the entire front wall. The walk-in shower, designed as a real relaxation space, occupies the entire bottom of the room for comfortable and pleasant use.

Photography by Riccardo Gasperoni
Design by Chroma Studio

Though the Twin Towers will forever be ingrained in American culture, their architect and many of the themes he intended for the World Trade Centers’ design have been lost in the annals of history.

Japanese architect Minoru Yamasaki was a modernist who designed for human interaction. His designs might have been minimal, pared down, and somewhat cold, but life could fill them up. He preferred people to interior design too. As he once said: “If you have white walls, human beings look better in a room than if you have red walls.” Yamasaki, who designed the original World Trade Centers in 1973, is the subject of a new book called Sandfuture, out on September 14. The book traces his unconventional path in architecture, from his early life, born to Japanese immigrants in 1912, to his path in architecture, moving to New York City during the Great Depression.

Yamasaki was part of the New Formalism movement, which saw its rise in the 1950s, aiming for a monumental presence in modernist towers, with delicate details and a rich use of materials like marble and granite. 

In 1955, he started his own firm, Yamasaki & Associates, which created 43 residential and commercial towers across the globe, from Brazil to Azerbaijan. Though his design accomplishments are awe-inspiring, he remains in the margins of design history.

Yamasaki is best known for designing the original World Trade Center towers, which were destroyed on 11 September 2001 in a terrorist attack. At 1,368 and 1,362 feet (417 and 415 meters) tall, the towers were the world’s tallest buildings when they opened in 1973.

However, despite their international significance, Yamasaki’s career sits in “the margins of architectural history”.

Yamasaki was born in 1912 and raised in Seattle, Washington to Japanese immigrant parents, and anti-Japanese prejudice defined much of his youth. He enrolled on the University of Washington’s architecture program in 1929 and started his own firm 20 years later.He was commissioned for The World Trade Center in 1962 by American banker David Rockefeller and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, after being selected from a shortlist including architects IM Pei, Philip Johnson, Welton Becket and Walter Gropius.

The complex was built with the aim of revitalizing Lower Manhattan, and it drew on the 1939 New York World’s Fair exhibit called the World Trade Center, which was dedicated to the concept of achieving world peace through trade. We are accustomed now to seeing the World Trade Center as a symbol of American capitalism and American unilateralism, but that’s not really what it meant when it was built.

The project was conceived around an idea of global trade as a force for good that seems impossibly naïve now.

Project designed as “a Mecca” – Yamasaki’s final design for the center – a pair of towers with narrow windows, decorative pointed arches at their base and a large surrounding plaza – was revealed in 1964. His aim was to embody the New York World’s Fair exhibit concept by creating a “beacon of democracy” and, in the architect’s own words, “a Mecca”.

Minoru Yamasaki & Associates, Rainier Bank Tower (Seattle, 1972–1977). 

Yamasaki genuinely believed that this project could be both a nexus of international commerce and a beacon of democracy and goodwill between nations. However, despite his ambitions, “accepting the job was not an easy decision” for Yamasaki. It was the commission of a lifetime, and he knew that he could not turn it down, but he also understood that it was too big a job for his office.

Twin Towers branded “Disneyland fairytale blockbuster” – Upon its conception, the World Trade Center was widely lauded but as the project progressed “critical reception shifted dramatically”. Yamasaki worked in “constant conflict” with the port authority as it cut key elements of the design to save costs and pushed the scheme to increase its height and office space. This turn of events is encapsulated by the shift in opinion of the late architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable over the course of the project.

Ada Louise Huxtable was a longtime advocate of Yamasaki’s work, but she was also a very sharp and conscientious critic, and the evolution of her opinion is a good indication of the arc of the critical reception of the project.

It is hard to imagine another pair of buildings which in their lifespan, from conception to construction to spectacular violent destruction, have exerted a greater influence on the course of American architecture. It is difficult to imagine any story that has shaped the culture and politics of architecture in the last eighty years more than the thousands of images of the towers of the World Trade Center collapsing under their own weight.

Yamasaki “remains largely unknown” – partly blames Yamasaki’s untraditional approach to modernism and use of ornament for his obscurity in the architecture industry. However, his background also had a large part to play due to the “diversity problem” in the architecture sector. Art, cinema, literature have all had major reckonings with their respective lack of diversity in recent years, but less attention has been paid to the fact that most of the buildings we work in, live in, go to school in have been designed by one very homogeneous group of people.

Read more about Justin Beal and SANDFUTURE here

Atelier Barda, an architectural firm renowned for its constructive thinking in approaching every design, introduces Residence Alma, a full renovation project of a residential triplex in Montreal’s Little Italy district. The program focused on redeveloping an existing commercial ground floor space, as well as consolidating two upper floor apartments in order to design a single-family residence. Beautifully designed and executed, the result is quiet yet impactful.  

In approaching the mixed-use, early 20th century building, Atelier Barda focused on three archetype design principles: the loggia, the passageway, and the colonnade. The main idea was to preserve the existing façade and to use the envelope to deflect from what is happening inside while respecting the past making slight additions to delineate old from new, including rounded brick columns that subtly contrast with the angular architecture of the original building.

In respecting the external façade of the building, Atelier Barda made only subtle changes to existing elements in order to transition the building from the past to the present. In contrast, the interior of the existing building was completely gutted and redesigned from scratch. A portion of the commercial space was preserved, yet halved in size, and cuts were made to the side of the existing façade in order to create new openings for entry to the residential space, and for a new garage. The original entrance to the upper-level apartments was then relocated from the main commercial boulevard to the residential side street, providing the client with more discreet access to the residence. At the rear of the building, two external balconies were enclosed by making a slight extension of the brick façade, using brick patterns that match the original construction.

To maximize its vision, while adhering to strict building codes and regulations, Atelier Barda embarked on an interior design plan that compressed previous ceiling heights, established new floor plates, and created a fourth level in the form of a rooftop mezzanine. On the second level of the building, the firm created a visitor’s suite comprised of three bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and two bathrooms. The third level, which serves as the principal living quarters of the client, was hollowed out to create an open-air courtyard that is enclosed in glass internally and divides the living room area from the master bedroom. Extending vertically, the stunning courtyard is exposed to nature’s elements from above and features lush vegetation, seating areas, and a Japanese soaking tub. The courtyard really articulates the space, while creating a very private outdoor area for the client. It also allowed us to bring abundant light into the core of the building.