Oval Office
Stockholm
Anders Berensson Architects has designed and built part of their own studio space by using a CNC mill to create a puzzle of 16 plywood sheets that’s been assembled into one big oval cabinet/workspace surrounding the whole studio space. When both designing and building the project our self without intermediary we got the possibility to customize and control every detail. A process that led to new design strategies but also to an unexpected production of wood toys. When moving into a new office space we were faced with a dilemma. To pick the big unsharming studio space or the smaller one with a great view. We picked the later. The smallness of the room however forced us to do an efficient design that would make use of every square meter. We therefore skipped the usual readymade furniture and instead designed one big custom made office cabinet. To get the most work space out of the room we decided to build the cabinet so it surrounded the whole studio space with different work stations programed into it. By rounding the cabinet’s edges we could host more space consuming programs in the rounded corners and less space consuming programs in the straight shallow parts. The cabinet is customize to host a small entrance, library, a model making space and an analog work station with integrated storage towards the inner walls. When facing the windows the cabinet is programed with more common workspaces for computers. A plain table with no specific program is placed in the middle for more unspecified use.

To retrofit an exact cabinet prefabricated by a precision tool into an old crooked building we need to have a strategy for tolerances. Since the CNC mill don’t care if a cut is straight our curved we decide to take advantage of this in our design. We therefore designed a sinus corrugated joint. Whereas a straight precision joint only fits in a 90 degree angle the sinus curved joint gets a small gap in slanting corners still interlocking the two boards when plugged into a standing board underneath. With this joint we could have the needed tolerance when assembling the cabinet. Working whit a machine that can make any complex cut directly from your drawing it’s hard to not start to customize details. We therefore took use of the mill customizing almost every detail. Having access to a mill we also tried to do as much as possible in wood. We therefore aimed to have a 100% Wood structure with wood plugs instead of screws so that the cabinet can be packed flat and burned when demolished in the future.

When putting out the layout for milling each sheet we found out that all rounded pieces created a lot of unused space. To not through away good material we decided to fill this leftover spaces with a small production of wood toys.
