Stories on Design // Studios & Ateliers.

Photo by Frederik Vercruysse.

I feel so excited to share today’s post with you – a round up of incredibly inspiring studios and ateliers. These spaces traverse the globe and cross many disciplines, as we bring together a myriad of magical creative work spaces spanning the areas of architecture, painting, pottery, sculpture, woodworking, photography, graphics and industrial design.

The word studio is derived from the Italian: studio & from Latin: studium/ studere, meaning to study or zeal. The French term for studio, atelier, in addition to designating an artist’s studio is used to characterise the studio of a fashion designer. Atelier also has the connotation of being the home of an alchemist or wizard. This last sentence particularly rings true, as I can literally feel the life and energy pulsating through every single one of these spaces – this is after-all where “the magic happens”. So much creativity, passion, hard work, blood, sweat and tears would’ve been shed in these spaces. Dreams were made and broken, countless ups and downs were experienced. Hang on – am I talking about my own creative path here? Probably, but somehow I can just feel all the joy and the pain these artists and designers would’ve gone through right here in these spaces.

Here’s hoping that some of the endless inspiration, vibrant creative energy and quiet elegance evident in these images can rub off on all of us.

See More ‘Stories on Design’ Curated by Yellowtrace.

Images via The Selby.

Yuriko Takagi’s Studio in Tokyo // Photographer Yuriko Takagi’s light and serene Tokyo studio is filled with the photographer’s memories and experiences. Yuriko Takagi is one of those well-travelled people, and the studio is one of her favourite places in-between her distant destinations.

Photography by Ioana Marinescu.

House for a Painter by Dingle Price Architects // London architect Dingle Price has revamped a warehouse in south London to create a bright spacious home and studio for a painter and his family. Making use of an existing mezzanine, the architect divided the space in half to create two-storey living quarters on one side and a double-height studio on the other.

Photography by Maíra Acayaba.

Open Workshop by AR Arquitetos in São Paulo, Brazil // “The project proposes an exercise between indoor/outdoor and its materialisation, the idea of limit (mass/opacity) and continuity (openness/transparency), exploring how this resource can resolve the program organisation, recreating the relation between public/private as a continuity of the logic of urban space.” – AR Arquitetos

See more info & images here.

Photo courtesy of Arnold Newman/ Getty Images.

Pablo Picasso’s Studio in France, 1956 // In 1955, when Pablo Picasso moved to the villa La Californie in the hills above Cannes, France, with Jacqueline Roque, who was to become his second wife, he was considered to be the greatest and most famous artist in the world. The studio was at the centre of his life – the ground floor rooms were formerly the salon and dining room of the house, with enormous Art Nouveau windows that gave out onto a large, untended garden, filled with his bronze cast sculptures.

Photography by Ty Cole.

Roy Lichtenstein Residence & Studio by Caliper Studio // Brooklyn-based Caliper Studio has renovated the former home and studio of the late American pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, adding a rooftop sculpture garden and a pair of “eyebrow-shaped” skylights. The two buildings were originally constructed as a garage and metal shop in New York’s Greenwich Village, before the late artist converted them into a residence and workspace in the 1980s. After his death, the studio was handed over to the Lichtenstein Foundation for preservation, but the apartment remained the home of Lichtenstein’s widow Dorothy.

Photography © Adrià Goula.

Studio for Eduardo Arranz-Bravo by Garcés De Seta Bonet in Barcelona, Spain // Situated on the northern face of Tibidabo mountain overlooking Barcelona, the new studio space for the Catalan painter Eduardo Arranz-Bravo is a two-story concrete building set within a sloping site close to the artist’s house. The studio, a space with no views, receives light primarily from a large skylight in the meeting point of the four sloping roofs that irregularly finish the definition of the space from the crowning horizontal line of the 5-metres high periphery walls.

Photography © Filip Dujardin.

Studio Koen van den Broek by Tijl Vanmeirhaeghe & Carl Bourgeois in Belgium // From the centre of the studio, a high and oblong atelier accessible by car, 6 exorbitant wooden doors provide access to distinct ateliers. The entire project is materialised by timber beams with oversized sections. The wooden doors act as a standard measure calibrating the different universes.

A Georgian Townhouse in Edinburgh Remodeled for an Artist by Sarah Lonsdale // When Scottish artist Alison Watt was looking for a studio space in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she could also live, she turned to local architect Helen Lucas to help turn a floor in an A-listed Georgian townhouse into a combination painting studio and gracious flat.

Photo by Sibila Savage.

Mari Andrews’ Studio // Mari Andrews’s Emeryville studio features a large wall filled with prototypes of her incredible wire sculptures.

Fondazione Castiglioni is home to Achille’s archive and ramains much as he left it when he died in 2002. Photo by Martyn Thompson.

Achille Castiglioni in his studio.

Studio Museum Achille Castiglioni, Milan // Main Atelier and Monica Castiglioni’s Creative Lab, represent the essence of her work, beautifully and stylish, located in the Milan’s creative soul heart. “If you are not curious, forget it.” – Achille Castiglioni.

Photos by Simon Watson for NY Times.

Brice Marden’s New York City Studio // Abstract painter Brice Marden is among the handful of living artists established enough to be considered part of art history. From 1987 to 2000, Marden’s studio was located on the Bowery. Today, the artist keeps a Manhattan studio in a 10th-floor penthouse duplex on West Street overlooking the Hudson River. The studio was carved out of an old carriage house and has been converted into a large, light-filled space with western and northern exposures.

Image via Elle Decoration South Africa.

Former French Schoolhouse Turned Enchanting Artist Studio in France // Claire Basler is a French floral painter who lives and works in a former schoolhouse in Les Ormes, right outside of Paris. Her home studio has been featured in Elle Decor multiple times for its uniqueness and beauty.

Photography © Sergio Camplone.

D Opera by Studio Zero85 in Italy // The building, situated on the top of a hill, responds to a dual function – artist’s studio and home for the family. The interior space consists of a living unit on two levels of wood, including the kitchen, bathrooms, bedrooms and the library, which divides in two the total volume – study and living. The openings guarantee a horizontal light in the studio and at the same time frame of the views of particular landscape suggestion.

Donald Judd Home & Studio in NYC restored by Architecture Research Office // The New York home and studio of the late American artist Donald Judd opened to the public in 2013 after a three-year restoration. Led by New York-based Architecture Research Office (ARO), a team of consultants and engineers have restored the interiors of the five-storey residence, where Judd lived and worked from 1968 until his death in 1994, amassing a collection of over 500 artworks.

Photo by Herbert Matter, courtesy of The Alexander and Louisa Calder Foundation, New York.

Alexander Calder’s Roxbury, Connecticut Studio in 1941 // Alexander Calder is one of the most acclaimed and influential sculptors of the twentieth century. In 1934, Calder made his first outdoor works in his Roxbury, Connecticut studio, using the same techniques and materials as his smaller works. Exhibited outside, Calder’s initial standing mobiles moved elegantly in the breeze, bobbing and swirling in natural, spontaneous rhythms. In fact, the first few outdoor works were too delicate for strong winds, which forced Calder to rethink his fabrication process.

Alessandro Mendinis’ Studio in Milan // Alessandro Mendini is an Italian designer and architect, who played an important part in the development of Italian design. The studio occupies what was once workers housing in an old factory on Milan’s eastern outskirts. Mendini and his brother moved there in 1989, when they founded Atelier Mendini. They’ve marked their turf by building a postmodernist folly—a supersize, mosaic canopy in the yard—and filled the studio with posters, architectural models, and objects in the vibrant colours and flamboyant patterns that Mendini loves. Mendini lives above the studio.

Photography by Carlos Copertone, courtesy of AD Spain.

Fernando Higueras Diaz Foundation HQ in Spain // Fernando de Higueras Díaz was one of the most famous architects in the world during the 1970s. His work is recognised worldwide as an original and interesting union of constructivist, rationalist and organic architecture.

Photographer Jake Stangel captures San Francisco’s Creative Community // Jake Stangel takes us into the workspaces of some of the city’s crafty residents with his stunning photo series. A woodworker, sign maker, luthier, printmaker, ceramicist and jewellery maker are the subjects of Stengel’s grain-heavy photographs for Afar Magazine, vivid colours bringing each shot to life. The American photographer’s natural talent perfectly captures the steps between the artists’ original inspiration and the end product.

Photography by Frederik Vercruysse.

Jos Devriendt’s Studio in Ghent, Belgium // Belgian Designer Jos Devriendt’s one-man business is a late-surrealist concept. An artist, designer and potter, Devriendt creates abstract objects such as industrial ceramics using traditional methods.

Photography by Frederik Vercruysse.

Benoît van Innis’ Studio Brussels // Benoît van Innis is a versatile artist, associated mainly with absurd drawings in newspapers and magazines like The New Yorker, with rhythmic abstraction in paintings, with monumental murals and with his interior design collaborations with renowned architecture practices like noAarchitecten and Robbrecht & Daem.

KAWS’ Brooklyn Studio by Masamichi Katayama // Artist Brian Donnelly of KAWS, creates high-priced artwork, and he recently moved into a new studio in Williamsburg that looks a lot more like an upscale gallery. The artist purchased the run-down and tagged-up building in Brooklyn for just shy of $1M. After buffing the graffiti from his front gate, he hired Tokyo-based architect Masamichi Katayama of Wonder-Wall to renovate the interior. The resulting space is an “extensive openness” flooded with natural light.

Photography by Jeff Goldberg/ESTO.

Snøhetta Converts Brooklyn Warehouse to Artist Studio for José Parlá // In summer of 2014, José Parlá, the Cuban-American artist and painter, worked with Snøhetta to convert a warehouse in Gowanus, Brooklyn into his new working artist studio. A pair of U-shaped, interlocking spaces, dubbed the Arena and the Nest, separate the working and exhibition area from a cozy, lofted mezzanine, designed for relaxing and to provide Parlá varied perspectives of his work. Pivoting walls allow for flexible display and handling of large pieces.

Photo © Thomas Jantscher, courtesy of Charles Pictet Architecte.

Studio in an Agricultural Building by Charles Pictet in Genève, Switzerland // The project was implemented in a former cowshed with a barn, situated in a rural hamlet surrounding a manor. It recalls the spirit of the Geneva region in the 18th century, when the manor squires spent the winter in the city and the summer in the coutryside. The studio and the adjoining auxiliary rooms are the buildings only habitable rooms, which do without a superfluous finish. They are designed to be spacious, bright and heated.

Tenka Gammelgaard’s Studio // Tenka’s commitment to stripes and monochromatic palette is evident in everything she does – the space she inhabits, the art she creates, countless objects she surrounds herself with and even the clothes she wears. She even bothers to paint her brushes with black & white stripes. I am also quite taken by the overall studio feel of lived-in-organised-chaos.

See the full article here.

Photography by Jürg Zimmermann.

Atelier Hermann Rosa in Munich, Germany // We’re off to Munich, to the Atelier Rosa, studio space of the late German sculptor Hermann Rosa. The interiors are denuded of all save the absolute minimum. A single material (concrete) is deployed throughout with tremendous effect.

Read the full article & see more images here.

GamFratesi’s Studio // Danish architect Stine Gam and Italian architect Enrico Fratesi founded GamFratesi studio in 2006. The studio is located in Copenhagen, though Gram and Fratesi are continuously travelling between Italy and Denmark for the development and research of new projects.

Related posts:
Interview with Stine Gam & Enrico Fratesi of GamFratesi.

Vitra + Artek x Studio Ilse // The first – and smokin’ hot – installation and collaboration between Vitra + Artek opened at VitraHaus loft in Weil am Rhein. Officially joining forces in 2013, after Vitra acquired Artek, the two furniture companies enlisted the help of Ilse Crawford of Studio Ilse who created a glorious space to introduce the union of the two brands. Rather than simply display their products alongside each other, the shared brand is introduced in the form of a story – an imaginary home of a fictitious Finnish-German couple, Harri and Astrid.

See more images and read the full article here.

Photo by Elian Somers.

Wieki Somers Studio // Dylan van den Berg and Wieki Somers studied at Design Academy Eindhoven in the 90’s and established Studio Wieki Somers in 2003. The studio distinguishes itself by a sensitivity for materials, technological ingenuity and fantasy.

Related Post: Mitate Lighting Collection by Studio Wieki Somers.

Photography by Carine Thévenau, courtesy of Karen Woodbury Gallery.

Lara Merrett’s Sydney Studio // Lara Merrett’s colour-rich paintings have been compared to the romantic painters of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For Merrett, it’s the inquiry into the picture plane and surface, balance of ink and acrylic, of depth and opacity, chaos with order and the reference to otherness’ that inspire her works.