Since their clients "couldn't expand upwards or outwards," says London-based Atmos Studio about the project that won them a 2013 UK Wood Award on Wednesday, they had no choice but "to expand inwards." And so the studio built from computer-cut slices of oak a so-called "Roominaroom. From the inside, the bedroom they inserted into this London flat looks like the below-deck view of a ship's hull, but the beams that give it this curving shape also jut into the room itself, becoming the dividers in a bookshelf and the supports for a double bed. It's all rather groovy and anatomical.
Even cooler is how this design allowed Atmos to build the thing. The skeleton of the room arrived flat-packed in the back of a truck, and was "rapidly unfolded into a set of submillimetre-perfect digitally-fabricated ribs that were connected and erected within a day." A day's work isn't too shabby for such a huge improvement on an empty studio. The staircase formed by horizontal slabs emerging out of the partition is one particularly inspired touch.
A precisely joined, intricately accentuated, one-of-a-kind room assembled in a matter of hours, all made possible by CNC carving. The future of woodworking looks bright indeed.
· Bendy Wooden Room Snaps Together Like Tetris, Takes Over House [Gizmodo]