In the heart of San Maurizio d’Opaglio, just a few steps from Lake Orta, studio wok designs the headquarters for Quadro, a company specialized in high-end faucets. Led by Marcello Bondavalli, Nicola Brenna, and Carlo Alberto Tagliabue, the team takes on the challenge of reinterpreting the company’s outdoor spaces, transforming them into a fluid system of shared areas that blend production and domestic life.
The intervention builds on an existing area of approximately 300 square meters, reshaping the landscape through a precise and calibrated gesture: a wide concrete plateau serves as a public square and neutral base from which emerge three distinct volumes—a converted cabin, a pergola, and a swimming pool. The project develops as an open device, capable of suggesting multiple ways to use the space.
The electrical cabin, carefully preserved through thoughtful design, becomes the focal point of spatial experimentation. The ground floor houses a small kitchen and a bathroom, directly connected to the outside via sliding metallic windows. The vertical development is utilized with two mezzanines linked by a metallic staircase: the first, in natural wood, accommodates a bed, while the second reappropriates an existing concrete slab, transforming it into a small, luminous alcove.
Next to the cabin, a pergola helps define the boundary and livability of the area, introducing a shaded zone for socializing. Finally, a small swimming pool—semi-buried in the ground—emerges as a monolithic volume in anthracite stone, serving not only as a water container but also as urban furniture: a sculptural seat that reinforces the hybrid character of the intervention, blending domesticity and collectivity.
studio wok’s design stands out for its ability to develop an essential architectural language that combines construction precision with compositional lightness. An operation that discreetly integrates into the landscape and industrial context, offering new scenarios for the relationship between architecture, nature, and daily life.
studio wok
Founded in Milan in 2012, studio wok centers its research around the concept of habitat, understood as the quality of living. Through the integration of architecture, design, and landscape, the studio develops projects ranging from domestic to urban scales, with coherence, sensitivity, and attention to the context. The team includes Marcello Bondavalli, Nicola Brenna, Carlo Alberto Tagliabue, along with Federica Torri, Claudia Begni, Marzia Colombo, Sara Cefis, and Laura Trobec.
For more info: www.studiowok.com
CREDITS
Project: QuadroDesign HQ
Architect: studio wok
Location: San Maurizio d’Opaglio (NO), Italy
Year: 2022
Photography: Marcello Mariana studio
