OFFICINA – An Educational Space Designed by Smarin for the Triennale

OFFICINA is imagined as a living educational space, capable of embracing all the activities a contemporary museum might host — spontaneous or organized, contemplative or active, for every age group and every form of learning.

Smarin proposes to the Triennale a space that is dynamic and polymorphous enough to accommodate the full spectrum of educational moments, a space that users can shape according to their needs and desires, inventing new habits and practices centered on holistic fulfillment.

Dynamic Space System

The compositional principle at the heart of OFFICINA is a simple, robust, and durable construction system, based on a set of modular blocks crafted from pure, natural materials: solid spruce and cork, selected for their ecological properties, their longevity, and their sensorial qualities.

Assembled without nails or screws, these blocks can be combined to form desks, seats, partitions, loungers, storage units, or play structures. Their geometry is designed to offer maximum flexibility, allowing the space to be reconfigured intuitively, fostering a bodily, participatory relationship with the environment.

A Polytypological and Reversible Furniture System

The flexibility of OFFICINA lies in its ability to adapt instantly to the needs of each moment. A collective can, in a few minutes, transform its environment to create a workspace, a dance studio, a screening room, a play area, or a haven for quiet relaxation.

The lightweight, modular elements allow the space to open or divide fluidly, encouraging spontaneous and creative uses. When not needed, the blocks can be stacked and stored compactly, keeping the environment clear and adaptable without effort. This responsiveness nurtures a mode of inhabiting space that is active, sensitive, and inventive, encouraging all users — children, teenagers, adults — to physically engage with their surroundings.

Useful & Functional Storage

Soundproofing and thermal insulation wall

The thickness of the blocks and the intrinsic characteristics of cork mean you can go from designing your space to insulating it from noise and heat.

The design features of the Dynamic Space Program make it a useful object-system in any situation. When stored, the vertically stacked cork blocks form a layer of sound and heat insulation.

The Object Makes the World

Building Your Environment to Practice the Design Process and Its Agentivity

What is at stake is the user's ability to model their environment. Doing means gaining confidence in your ability to act. Doing means overcoming the fear of change, the inertia of the ‘unknown’.

At the heart of the Triennale, the possibility of experimenting the process of design ‘by the preparation and shaping of any action, with a view to a desired and foreseeable end’ (V. Papanek, Design for a Real World) — in this case, the education space.

Using a construction system that enables the furniture that makes up the space to be self-produced, the members of the group will be able to experiment with interactions in a coordinated network to produce the installation of the space. To set the devices in motion in the space, it will be necessary to co-ordinate as a group.

A New Model for Educational Spaces

OFFICINA proposes a new model for educational spaces: one that is dynamic, somatic, and ecological. It offers the Triennale a place for shared invention, anchored in the cultural life of the institution, a space where each visitor is invited to move, to think, and to create freely.

Smarin’s Unique Approach

Smarin's unique approach is based on a multidisciplinary team that designs, manufactures in the workshop and diffuses directly its projects. This particularity constitutes a tool of independence in design and research.

Since 2003, Smarin has been exploring the notion of comfort and developing unconventional expressions centred on the thriving of the living. Smarin questions our automatisms and proposes to invent new routines.

The Smarin design studio creates projects for furniture, scenography and layout for both public and private spaces. Using tool-objects and furniture-systems, Smarin creates situations of interaction and spaces for collective invention.