SALVAGED MATERIAL ARTIST STUDIO
This studio space for the Materials for the Arts (MFTA) designer-in-residence program was designed and built by CO Adaptive entirely from reused, donated, and salvaged materials.
In alignment with MFTA’s mission of providing access to creative material reuse, and CO Adaptive’s commitment to reducing the carbon impact of the building sector, we explored a design process that differs from the norm. Whereas we typically tend to design before searching for how and with what to manifest an idea, working with solely re-used material necessitates an understanding of what is available at the very beginning of the creative process.
The final material palette is comprised of donated theater flats, scaffolding posts from a local business, and reclaimed wood and cork from CO Adaptive’s ongoing construction material archive. To anchor the structure and define the studio’s form, we punctured the warehouse’s existing hung ceiling at calibrated moments, and designed an armature for the theater flats to become a curved wall.
The resulting intervention creates a private space for the studio artist, with opportunities for flexible use of the panel framing for pinning up or placing works-in-progress and other materials. The flat sides of the panels serve as surfaces or backdrops for public facing exhibitions and workshops. Two of the flats are operable as doors should the artists need to transfer larger items between the spaces, or want to open their studio up for viewers.
Location | Queens, NY
Category | Cultural, Renovation, Public
Client | Materials for the Arts
Status | Complete [2025]
Designed and built with CO Adaptive
Team | Ruth Mandl, Bobby Johnston, Andrew Brown, Kelvin Lee, Miles Scanlon
Photography | Kelvin Lee (unless otherwise noted)
(Photo: Hanna Grankvist)
︎