Officinaleonardo pursues, in his works, several themes including the relationship between matter and light, the transparency of spaces, the inclusion of nature in the built, the ecological habitat in his self-sustainability, and psychological well-being of those living and working in the spaces created.

This small art studio, where the painter Vincenzo Scolamiero still conceives and creates his paintings hanging between the figurative and the abstract, it was an interesting test case to focus on some of these objectives in relation with a limited budget. The work is an intervention in the context of the medieval towers in Rome, with their deep shadows casted on the surrounding space. These shadows were the main object of Officinaleonardo’s operation , being them a disadvantage for the painter’s job.

Officinaleonardo has shifted the focus away, from natural light to the light emanating from some paintings by the artist and the contrasted relation with the sharp shadows cast by the towers.
So these shadows become a raw wall of burnished iron that grabs the space located on two different levels and in two distant environments, like a pincer. At the same time it organize the space, welcoming on the inside, partially hidden behind a series of openings and flaps, an artist’s closet, racks for storage of canvas, a tiny kitchen for break time and a tech room. Concerning the artist’s cabinet, the purpose was to establish a closer relationship between the artist and the space he lives every day, where take inspirations even in the bathroom, here the wonderful mosaic shower inside the cylinder overlooks the ancient brick vaults shown in a new light after a careful restoration work.

In the detail, this space, entirely designed, including the sink – washing brushes and handles access, can make you understand and admire all the love lavished on interior design, even when budgets are limited and you cannot answer to everything requested. In the painting room the hard wall of iron develops a logarithmic series of cubes emerging from clouds and streaks of iron oxides, from the bottom up, providing a basis for the exhibition of works in progress or completed.

Even here the encounter between the chaos of the typical burnished iron spots and the Order of progressive logarithmic scale of the holds iron, summarizes the matrix of “make” architecture. Just as the astrophysicist David Bohm argued that the real strength of the universe does not exist, and as well as in the Scolamiero’s paintings different universes find their fulfillment and their synthesis in this wall. Solidity of matter seems to melt into a cosmic void.

Design: Officinaleonardo / Leonardo Pascoletti / Milos Ippoliti / Alì Daneshgar / Giorgia Iachizzi / Saverio Fimmanò
Photography: Luigi Filetici