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Selencky Parson Office

Selencky Parsons adds cork-lined pod with pegboard walls to its own office

Selencky Parsons has designed its own London studio, using a cork pod with pegboard walls for storing stationery, displaying models and hanging plants.

Selencky Parson Office

Selencky Parsons' studio occupies the ground floor of a residential building located on a street corner opposite Brockley station in southeast London.

Large windows make the space visible from the outside, so the architects used the pod to create an intimate working studio in the pointed corner of the irregularly shaped space.

Selencky Parson Office

Cork is used to line the walls and floors, as well as make desks, to add a warmer atmosphere to the previously "characterless" commercial space.

"We wanted to create a comfortable working zone within the space, while maximising the benefits afforded by the highly visible site," said the architects.

Selencky Parson Office

"The cork-lined pod, mediates the external environment creating the right degree of exposure versus privacy," they continued.

Timber pegs slot into the holes across the interior and exterior of the cork walls to support shelves, models and rolls of paper that decorate inside the studio.

Selencky Parson Office

On the outside, the pegs are used for hanging plants and coats on either side of the rectangular opening into the space.

Selencky Parson Office

"It was important to have a flexible and changeable environment," explained the architects, "so by drilling holes across the interior and exterior surfaces of the cork pod we have used timber pegs to support shelves, models, coats, plants or anything required in the operation of the studio that can be adapted as required."

Selencky Parson Office

These holes also act as a discreet ventilation from a plenum in the ceiling to maintain a comfortable temperature across the studio space, and reduce reverberations to improve the acoustics of the space.

Display shelves are fitted on the exterior of the pod in front of the street-facing windows so the studio can present its recent work like a shop window.

Selencky Parson Office

The meeting area and social space that occupies the surrounding area, is furnished with cork stools from Ilse Crawford's collection for IKEA.

Apart from a white-painted floor graphic, it was left largely unfinished to contrast to the cork pod. A kitchenette is cut out of one of the outer walls of the pod, and the toilet and sink is placed in a separate room.

Selencky Parson Office

Selencky Parsons is one of a number of architects who have designed studios for themselves, with spaces ranging from a solitary woodland retreat to another finished with repurposed scaffolding boards and concrete.

Other projects by the architecture studio include a stepped extension to 1960s terraced house in London and a glass and white concrete house in Oxfordshire.

Photography is by Richard Chivers.

More images and plans

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Floor plan
Studio diagram
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Selencky Parson Office
Selencky Parson Office
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Selencky Parson Office
Selencky Parson Office
Selencky Parson Office
Selencky Parson Office
Selencky Parson Office
Selencky Parson Office
Selencky Parson Office