Casa Josephine Studio was commissioned to design a meeting hall for the buyers and gallerists of ARCO, the Contemporary Art Fair that is held in Madrid.
The design is a 93 square-meter rectangular space used for lectures, meeting and workshops. Flexibility of use and a strong feeling of privacy were the prerequisites. The meeting hall is in a building with no natural light.
Casa Josephine Studio met the requests by creating a box-like structure in neutral grey tones (a perimeter of aluminum Venetian windows blinds, grey carpet covering the floors and ceilings) with pieces of furniture from the 1980s by Achile Castiglioni and Toshiyuki Kita, and custom-made quartz adaptable structures.
Light brings color into the space.
From the point of view of ideas and inspiration, the project pivots around one image and one challenge:
- a) the image is a line from a poem by Mexican writer Octavio Paz: "light is time that meditates upon itself". This association of light and time is expressed in the space by using colored light that brings the notion of time by filtering shades of sunrise, sunset and dusk. As the designers explain, "in a building with no natural light and during work meetings, time feels suspended. Light in this case transforms the neutrality of the colors into information about the passage of time".
- b) the challenge is how to use elements from private residential interiors, such as Persian rugs, armchairs and dining tables, and transfer them to a semi-public space for work use.
The aesthetics behind the project pay hommage to the style that inspired the homes of the first collectors of contemporary art in Spain in the decade of the 1980s.
