A private study built around a single run of curved dark joinery, with a reading corner set apart in cream and olive.
The office, in sequence
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A private study built around a single run of curved dark joinery, holding storage, display and a working desk within one continuous form. A reading corner — a cream lounge chair, its ottoman, and a single olive tree — is set apart from the desk, so the room can hold two different kinds of attention without either intruding on the other.
03 chapters
The brief called for a room that could hold a full working day without ever feeling like an office. The desk needed to all but disappear when it wasn't in use, and the room needed a second mode — somewhere to sit and read that had nothing to do with work.
The solution was to give each function its own geometry: a curved run of joinery for storage, display and the desk, and a quieter, unrelated corner for everything else.
A single dark timber, curved rather than cut into corners, runs from floor to ceiling and carries the desk, the shelving and a glazed display cabinet within one continuous form. Reeded glass panels break the run without interrupting it, catching light rather than blocking it.
The reading corner is kept in a lighter, warmer register — cream boucle, pale timber, a single olive tree — so the shift from joinery to seating reads as a change of mode, not just a change of furniture.
Every source is concealed — beneath the shelving returns, along the underside of the desk, inside the display cabinet — so the room is lit by its own surfaces rather than by visible fittings. A single window, dressed in a woven screen, is the only source the room doesn't control itself.
The effect holds through the day and after dark alike: the joinery reads as warm and occupied at any hour, without a single fitting on show.
