Starting this week, the long-disused roof tower of Amsterdam's historic department store de Bijenkorf will come back alive as a wild studio for a series of artists, the first of whom will be Dutch designer Maarten Baas. Crafted by Dutch firm i29 Architects, who previously converted a garage into a minimalist home, this "Room on the Roof" is similarly sparse. One side of the 172-square-foot dwelling contains a double-height wooden installation, which stacks sleep and work spaces in a series of boxes. The rest of the space is painted stark white and comes with matching furnishings, which in this case, includes a telescope for scouting out the bustling Dam Square right beneath the two big windows.
Beyond its dreamy location, the other most fantastical parts of the space may be its modes of circulation. The entrance to the studio is a spiral staircase that opens up to the floor. A striking second set of spiral staircases twirl, perhaps one too many times, all the way to the cupola of the tower. Even ladders embedded in the stack of wooden boxes stand at an unrelenting 90-degree angle.
· i29's wooden wall turns historic department store tower into artists' residence [Dezeen]
· All Artists in Residence posts [Curbed National]
· All i29 Architects coverage [Curbed National]
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