The renovation of Machinery Hall of the A. M. Lutheri Furniture Factory

The original machinery hall is a part of A.M. Luther’s Furniture Factory which existed between 1877–1940, which was know for bent-plywood furniture trademarked with Luterma. The machinery hall was completed in 1912, whose architects were Nikolai Vassiljev and Aleksei Bubyr from Saint Petersburg. The quarter kept producing furniture and plywood throughout the Soviet period but ceased its production in 2004 due to relocation to outside of the city. It stood empty for more than 10 years until it came to our drawing board.

Our process started with to understand what is the quality of the space and practical requirement of office space. For organizing of the space the tools were used: “plaza” – the open space in the central nave, “plane”- the single-story open office, and “row-house” -multi-level office space.

We limited a tools of intervention: differentiating newly inserted structure by material and color, and utilizing as much plywood as possible to commemorate the production of the past.