Europe 40 Under 40 Awards Tell a friend

Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation


Architects: SA lab

Client: Crane Design

Project team: Alina Chereyskaya, Stepan Kukharskiy, Alexandra Terebova, Elena Sidorina

Photographer: Ilya Ivanov


Project Description: CRANE DESIGN showroom is a flexible space open for constant transformations based on the idea of a modern gallery. The showroom consists of 3 rooms, representing hundreds of items of tiles and furniture as pieces of art in a gallery. 

A specially developed parametric structure visually divides areas to avoid mixing and a chaotic outlook of the interior. The structure creates functional zones — meeting, working, exhibition areas. It is a self-bearing double-curved 1 mm thick aluminum surface.

Designing the metallic surface this way helped reduce the amount of waste, increase the assembly speed, and make the structure 100% recyclable.

During the construction process, flat aluminum pieces get the 3D shape according to the initial design. The structure is rigid due to its shape. Computational design tools and digital fabrication were used for form-finding, optimization, a decrease of financial resources, and the number of aluminum sheets used. Two parts of the structure were assembled in two weeks.