Project: Workspace in Minsk
Architects: Studio 11
Team: Maksim Vavinski, Tatiana Kashuro, Alexandr Zhmakin
Location: Minsk, Belarus
Year 2017
Photographer: Dmitrii Tsyrenshchikov
This office is the workspace of Studio11 – a young team of architects and designers from Belarus – and is based in Minsk. The layout consists of two work rooms, a kitchen, a separate room with materials and samples and a water closet. The interior did not have any initial stylistic orientation and was formed gradually.
It is safe to say that this space gathers up our professional preferences and is a physical expression of personal philosophy in design. Here one can find a number of techniques and objects that were used in our projects. One such element is a ceramic module which we developed for one of our interior projects. Things like this are very dear to us they fill the workspace with personal history and additional internal meaning. Such things are very dear to us. They fill the workspace with personal history and additional internal value.
In general our office is a reinterpretation of the modernist artistic thrust from the perspective of modern trends. The interior looks functional, sterile and is compositionally verified in shape and color. The floor is a rough concrete screed painted in light gray, almost white color. The surface is very lively, keeping all the pores and cracks. The ceiling is nothing more than the surface of reinforced concrete slabs. The walls are partially painted in a complex blue hue in one horizontal level, and the top of the walls has a worn white plaster finish. The curtains have the same color layout, which adds compositional integrity to the walls. There is one rather small wall partition that is made of glass blocks, which showcases the value of this magnificent material and refers us to the architectural elements of such master craftsmen as, for example, Alvar Aalto.
The centerpiece of the kitchen area is a clean volume of salmon color dining island with airy round pending lamps. Together with the walls, the island and the light balls create a clear formal composition of color and shape.
The wall of the main workspace is set on fire by a huge painting of a young Belarusian artist Zakhar Kudin. The bodacious spirit of the painting reminds of the Fauvists’s works of the beginning of the previous century. Such expression organically smooths the restrained character of space. The composition is complemented by a nearby standing Innovation daybed. Together they create a rather fin de siècle image of a modern interpretation of the “Barcelona Day Bed” by Mies van der Rohe set against a Matisse story. The coziness in this loud emptiness is created by green plants, graphic works, furniture of the Soviet period and all kinds of samples of fabrics, materials and products.
