Studio Corkinho

Today, in an era of constant physical time-space conflict, our concentration span has dwindled with the current overload of distraction. A concerted effort to reform people’s shelter of the mind needs to be challenged.

How can architectural skins invite us to slow down to re-source, to anchor in deep focus and to feel awake from a deeper level of consciousness? How can atmosphere evoke this stillness to inspire us to travel inwards? How to re-purpose cork as a contemporary building material to elevate sensorial wellbeing in the modern habitat and to imagine poetic combinations with other noble interior textures?

Studio Corkinho carried out a profound research on how to bring the home closer to Mother Earth. Like a bark protecting the core of a tree, Studio Corkinho uses architectural layers to give birth to a sanctuary shelter, a place of stillness, shaped by nature’s divine conditions like proportion, texture and patina.

ARCH becomes a design tool to shape sensorial, contemplative spaces and bodies, allowing a dynamic alignment between chaos and order.

We propose an architectural matrix of granule, tiles, bricks, blocks and screens to create endless variations, sourced from a curated collection of burnt cork bark archetypes in the form of furniture and interior settings. This way, ARCH becomes a hands-on building kit to create calming, sensorial atmospheres that are connected to Mother Earth and nourished by the benefits of cork’s versatility. The material’s visible tactility and unique patina are combined with inherent features like thermic improvement and sound absorption to guarantee a state of personal wellbeing, sustainable living and inner stillness.

We serve as cork artisans, as an atelier for architectural creations. Based on a series of case study designs, we present a series of model realisations for interior architecture. In doing so, ARCH activates the formation of a cooperative community, to build together on a story of sensorial awareness, where expertise is shared.

As a result, the energy of the natural atmosphere will lift up the experience towards a state of inner peace in the home environment. It is a form of biophilic design, where experiences of the natural world are integrated in the modern built environment. A feeling of oneness will awake the mind, as servant of the heart, within a universe where time harvests space, to land on the destination of the timeless now.