Alfredo Häberli Design Development

What is Alferano Studio? A showroom? An oversized dressing room? A temporary workplace for sales representatives? A waiting room? An event location? A bar-kitchen with added value? A stage for fashion shows? A photo studio? The extension of the boutique...?

These are the questions that kept me busy at this extraordinary time with this extraordinary space. It is precisely in such projects that the enormous potential lies, which a well-designed intervention in architecture can unfold. The room was first completely stripped out, reduced to an abstract shell and returned to its characteristic grid of columns and the formative beams of the roof structure. This empty space under the shed roof with its tiny window openings revealed something sacred: the peace it expressed, the symmetry and the light were so impressive and emotional that this quality had to be preserved at all costs. Only a few interventions were necessary: Architecturally, it is mainly two semi-circular wall elements, painted a confident and high-gloss sulphur green on the outside and white on the inside, just like the entire room. These two-metre-high walls divide the space and thus form consultation and sales zones. They act as a screen in the overheight attic, separating enough to create intimacy and at the same time leaving enough effect for the aerial space. The architectural intervention has the appearance of an art installation, the reduction has the look of a painting. The column grid is not touched. The symmetrical narrowing in the middle of the room acts like a gateway and pushes the workplaces towards the public and open front part with few built-in elements. With little intervention, I solve all the needs that have already been defined, but also those that are yet to arise in the course of this extraordinary time...