Milan and Treviso-based studio/workshop Studio GISTO has built a new production room inside Frakas Design Studio’s headquarters on Via Zuretti by turning four bookcases into load-bearing walls, using storage itself as the structure that holds up the roof. The intervention follows the studio’s first project for the same client’s Parco Gallery in 2024, this time carving out a dedicated home for the neighborhood’s new risograph printer. The result argues that a workspace can be structural furniture first and a room second, rather than the other way around.
A return engagement brought Studio GISTO back to Frakas Design Studio, now operating from the same Via Zurettiaddress that once housed Parco Gallery. The brief called for a space dedicated to production: somewhere to house the risograph printer, but also somewhere for workshops, laboratories, and shared working sessions among the wider studio community.
Four bookcases carry the weight of the intervention, literally. Conceived as load-bearing bookcases, they double as containers for books, paper, and the tools of daily production — collapsing the distinction between shelving and structure into a single object.
A lightweight roof sits above the bookcases, defining a distinct room without interrupting the continuity of the space. Light is allowed to pass through, keeping a visual and physical dialogue open with the surrounding workspace rather than isolating the risograph behind a solid wall.
Four screens, or paraventi, complete the system. These panels can be repositioned to open or close the workshop as needed, functioning alternately as walls, dividers, or display surfaces for prints and posters pinned up for review.
This adaptability lets the same footprint shift roles: a working laboratory for risograph runs, a small classroom for a workshop session, or a display element folded into the studio’s broader layout when an exhibition calls for it.
A vivid color and a compact geometric footprint give the structure a strong visual identity within Frakas Design Studio’s interior — a recognizable object rather than a discreet fitting, deliberately legible as a distinct addition rather than a renovation.
Circular development processes run through Studio GISTO’s approach on both projects for this client: rather than introducing a new system for each commission, the studio has returned to build on what it established at Parco Gallery, treating the studio’s evolving needs as a continuation rather than a series of unrelated interventions — a logic close to what Zyva Studio pursued at the Artus office in Paris, where a creative studio’s own workspace becomes a direct expression of its design thinking.
The more contestable position in this project is that structural elements — bookcases, screens, a roof — can carry as much identity-building weight as a dedicated finish or material palette, a claim that echoes RAW Studio’s own workspace in Sondrio but pushes it further by making the furniture itself load-bearing rather than simply expressive.