The project is located within an existing 19th century laneway building, and provides a series of flexible live/work studio spaces for a client and their media & production company. The program objectives included maximizing the allowable floor area on 2 floors plus mezzanine level, and providing varying degrees of privacy and audio/visual control for studio spaces. The site presents the opportunity of spatial immediacy within a richly textured and graphic urban environment.

Experientially, the project refuses to fully reveal itself as a whole and instead relies on passage between and views through a series of shifting layers to develop a multiplicity of readings. The primary studios on the lower levels remain cocooned by surrounding stairs, platforms, long halls, tall storage and service volumes, and overhead voids. Countering this sense of interiority, the studios are visually enmeshed with the surrounding laneway context through framed openings both existing and new. The upper mezzanine level studio is nested within full height void spaces that remain uninhabitable, while corner glazing at both ends of the floor and a roof deck extend the mezzanine out into the city.

Collaborator: Piccaluga Design Inc.