MAKERS OF MEMORIES
STUDIO VISIT
Finding balance through contrast is at the heart of the architectural and design practice of Fanny Bauer Grung and David Lopez Quincoces. Past and present. Simple and rich. Sweeping spatial gestures and refined details. The contrasting characters and talents of the partners, in life and work, also influence the expression of their Milanese studio, Quincoces-Dragó & Partners. Their work is difficult to categorise but Lopez Quincoces’ characteristic purity of line and Bauer Grung’s Scandinavian heritage means they are often labelled minimalist, a misnomer, she says.
They recently took over a two-storey space full of character in an early 1900s church complex in Isola as the new home for their studio. The ground level looks out through tall steel-framed windows onto a courtyard and gets direct light for at least five hours from spring to autumn while the lower level, but for some skylight windows, is subterranean. It was tempting to put the workspace in the basement and make the ground floor a showcase for their work, says Bauer Grung. “In the beginning we thought, oh it would be great to put the office downstairs and do something really cool and amazing on the ground floor but I think everyone working here would have been miserable.”
Read more about the studio and the couple’s apartment in Ark Journal VOLUME IX.
WORDS JENI PORTER
PHOTOGRAPHY WICHMANN + BENDTSEN
STYLING HELLE WALSTED
CASE STUDY
— DISSONANT BEAUTY
As in music, interior design calls on many elements – rhythm, contrast, repetition – to create that most subjective of visions: beauty.
CINCINATTI MODERN
High on a hillside in Cincinnati, sits a two-storey modernist wonder by two unsung heroes of American architecture, built for an art collector in the 1980s and that has been given a sensitive makeover to accommodate the collection of its second owner.
CREATIVE TRANSITIONS
Based on the loops and twists of the Möbius strip, an icon of mid-century Mexican design has become an integral part of the creative process for its custodian, designer and ceramicist Perla Valtierra.
MAKERS OF MEMORIES
STUDIO VISIT
Finding balance through contrast is at the heart of the architectural and design practice of Fanny Bauer Grung and David Lopez Quincoces. Past and present. Simple and rich. Sweeping spatial gestures and refined details. The contrasting characters and talents of the partners, in life and work, also influence the expression of their Milanese studio, Quincoces-Dragó & Partners. Their work is difficult to categorise but Lopez Quincoces’ characteristic purity of line and Bauer Grung’s Scandinavian heritage means they are often labelled minimalist, a misnomer, she says.
They recently took over a two-storey space full of character in an early 1900s church complex in Isola as the new home for their studio. The ground level looks out through tall steel-framed windows onto a courtyard and gets direct light for at least five hours from spring to autumn while the lower level, but for some skylight windows, is subterranean. It was tempting to put the workspace in the basement and make the ground floor a showcase for their work, says Bauer Grung. “In the beginning we thought, oh it would be great to put the office downstairs and do something really cool and amazing on the ground floor but I think everyone working here would have been miserable.”
Read more about the studio and the couple’s apartment in Ark Journal VOLUME IX.
WORDS JENI PORTER
PHOTOGRAPHY WICHMANN + BENDTSEN
STYLING HELLE WALSTED