Being a silversmith, our client needed more usable space in his industrial live/work shell but could not afford to lose any of the natural light provided through the existing skylight.

Solving this apparent contradiction became the driving force for the distinctive tectonics of this project. The resolution creates platforms circumscribing a central void underneath the existing roof light. These are made from a steel grating that at once transmits and deflects a large amount of light.

The resulting shape comprises a continuous succession of areas, each one staging a different activity, but overall interlinking. The ascension of a user through the continuous spiral trajectory produces a gradual shift towards increasingly private and personal spaces.

The new spaces occasionally also need to serve as a gallery for the display of the clients' crafted pieces. Visitors move upwards while examining the work at gradually progressive stages until reaching the final treasures that are displayed directly underneath the sky [light].

Hence ironically, the complex forms of the proposal, which emerged from a seemingly straightforward and functional brief, echo the social and religious concepts that inform the tradition of our clients' millennial Japanese metal craft.

 

 

Looking up from ground floor level, this looks towards the spiral void created among the various levels. The mezzanines are out of industrial steel grating, this is counterbalanced by the ethereal ribbon- like balustrade, made of translucent polycarbonate and lit up from its inside.