WORK
Small Office
of the Year
EARTHBOX BY EQUIPO
DE ARQUITECTURAASUNCIÓN – ‘Work needs to be redefined,’
mused Sevil Peach as she and her fellow jury
members picked the winning Small Office of
the Year. They were well aware that the small
office is a key battlefield when it comes to
reshaping our collective perception of where
a working day should take place. As a Goldi-
locks zone, halfway between the transitory
nature of a co-working space and the sense
of self-knowledge that comes with success-
fully growing into a large facility, this is one
of the most experimental breeding grounds
for renewed office typologies. How could
they use their choice to send a message to the
industry as a whole about what’s really neces-
sary in the workspace of the near future?
To convey that message, the jury
chose a project that went, quite literally,
back to the ground. As designers around
the globe are exploring how new tech-
based approaches can fix our working woes,
Equipo de Arquitectura steered strongly in
the opposite direction: the team members
wanted to make fundamental dignity
a seductive tenet.
Instead of securing a spot in a busi-
ness district for their first office, the founders
of Earthbox put down roots in a lush plot
located in a mostly residential neighbour-
hood in Asunción, where they could be
enveloped in green surroundings, even in the
middle of Paraguay’s capital. The architects
returned the favour to nature by enveloping
it back: Horacio Cherniavsky and Viviana
Pozzoli built their 45-m^2 workspace around
a guavirá tree, surrounding it with rammed-
earth walls and wooden elements made from
upcycled material from other projects.
What’s special about this building is
how intelligently they used the context. Para-
guay’s benign weather provides year-round
natural light, and while other contenders pro-
posed high-tech features for flexible work-
tops or crowded rooms with distinctive types
of furniture, something as simple as a set of
carpets on the floor eliminates the need for
height-adjustable workstations. ‘It is, above
all, a human space,’ concluded Peach. – RM
equipodearquitectura.com.pyPEOPLE'S VOTE
Sonic Union by Raw-NYCLe
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FRAME AWARDS 2019 109