Echoes of Carlo Scarpa and high-tech for a renovation in Verona

A jeweller's shop in the city centre is transformed into a coworking space, and Masaai studio has preserved the building's many lives amidst history, exposed systems and a quest for detail.

Spazio Diaz is a coworking space born from a renovation in the historic centre of Verona, a few steps from Porta Borsari. The intervention works on two registers: on the one hand, the "new", narrated by detailed solutions in materials and finishes, applied to surfaces and objects, existing and new; on the other hand, the harmony with the space of the historic building.
The chosen mood, as explained by the designers, is a neutral, almost cold atmosphere, allowing the brick walls, steeped in history, to speak to future users of this shared office.

MASAAI studio, Spazio Diaz, Verona, Italia, 2024. Foto Del Rio Bani

The decision on what to conceal and what to leave exposed is dictated by the spatial layout, with drywall and soundproofed rooms for individual offices contrasting with the corridor: a space that physically and metaphorically connects the entire floor. Here, exposed systems and cabling run together with a black grid, part of a structural system created in the 1980s to reinforce the building.
Opal glass partitions with minimal aluminum frames divide the spaces while allowing natural light to filter in through the windows, which is absorbed by the micro-cement floor, another choice that unites the environments.

We tried to keep the atmospheres as neutral as possible with a deliberately detached approach, as the original project was already strongly influenced by echoes of Scarpa's style. Between the medieval structure and the intervention from the 1980s, we find ourselves acting as the binding element and the invisible measure of history

Matteo Savoia, Masaai studio

Finally, evident echoes of Scarpa's influence emerge in the shaped beam to which Studio Masaai connects to redefine the internal spaces. This unusual element, suspended by 14 tie-rods that punctuate the offices, was once used not only to support the heavy safes of the former jewelry store but also to protect them from potential intrusions from above, through the black grid that is still visible along the corridor. Today, this almost artistic object finds a new role and place within the context of coworking, an innovative urban use, adding yet another layer to the many historical traces that permeate this adaptive reuse project.

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