Esteras Perrote nestles brick-clad painting studio in Argentinian woodland
Austere brick walls cloak a bright skylit painting studio at the heart of Atelier Cambre in Argentina, designed by local architecture practice Esteras Perrote.
The studio sits nestled within the mountainous, forested landscape of Còrboda's Punilla Valley, and was created for Argentinian artist Juan José Cambre.
Tasked with recreating the feeling of painting outdoors, Esteras Perrote organised the studio around a five-metre-high painting space, which is illuminated by long skylights and opens onto a terrace through a set of folding glass doors.
"One of the central gestures of the project emerged from a very simple request from the client: the possibility of painting outdoors," said the studio's co-founder Gonzalo Perrote.
"From that idea, we began to explore how the architecture could incorporate that experience without losing the sense of refuge of the studio," Perrote told Dezeen.
"Rather than a collection of rooms, the project proposes a generous working environment where light, landscape and painting structure the experience of the place."
The large volume containing Atelier Cambre's main studio space is connected to a tower-like service and circulation volume via a short, glazed link.
This tower contains bathrooms and a staircase leading up onto a rooftop terrace.
Both volumes have been clad in locally-sourced red brick, a choice informed by a small structure that had formerly stood on the site as well as a desire to blend in with the landscape.
Inside, the painting area sits beneath four long, narrow skylights. At the opposite end, a study area and small kitchenette are tucked under a steel mezzanine level that offers a vantage point over the painting space.
Carefully placed openings throughout the building frame views of the surrounding woodland, with two tall, narrow openings at the end of the painting space creating cross-ventilation to facilitate drying.
White finishes and natural wood floors create a minimal backdrop to Cambre's paintings, with the only colour in the interiors being a series of green cabinet doors alongside the kitchenette.
"Rather than imposing itself on the landscape, the architecture seeks to situate itself within it, using that open space as an opportunity," fellow co-founder Lucía Esteras told Dezeen.
"In this sense, each window was conceived as a specific frame of the surroundings, almost as a device to capture fragments of the landscape and bring them back into the interior," he added.
Other painting studios recently featured on Dezeen include The Grey County Studio in Ontario by Verge Select, which comprises three intersecting weathered steel volumes that overlook a woodland, and a historic barn restored by Schack Arkitektur for the painter Michael Kvium in Denmark.
The photography is by Javier Agustín Rojas.
The post Esteras Perrote nestles brick-clad painting studio in Argentinian woodland appeared first on Dezeen.