An Intimate Yet Challenging Creative Workspace

Summoning immersive design to the forefront, the Chalk Studio Office draws heavily from its core principles as a dynamic, young studio and translates these into the essence of its headquarters.

- Lavanya Chopra

Ever-morphing in its form and unafraid to start over—there is something grounding and tactile about chalk as a humble tool that has outlived its modern contemporaries with silent grace. Every stroke transforms its being while leaving a trace of creation over a canvas. Carrying this nascent sentiment at its heart, the Chalk Studio Office moulds a sanctuary for its inhabitants, embracing the concept of tabula rasa as they revel in the joy of a new-found home.

Nestled on the 20th floor of a commercial complex in Gurugram’s urban heart, the studio makes a home amid panoramic views, witnessing the meeting of endless green pastures, the vast skies, and the humdrum of the city. Piecing together one’s own creative workspace is a task that is intimate and challenging all at once. While stepping into the shoes of the end-user comes with its own bout of consideration, it also presents a team with the ability to unearth a blank space’s potential that yearns to be explored. The team’s working style fuelled the design process at the primary stages, placing collaboration figuratively and metaphorically at its nucleus.

With over two dozen iterations, Vaastu-posed improvisations, and back-end changes encountered while endowing the spaces with a new lease of life, the current state of the workspace establishes an equilibrium between functionality, interaction, and an empowering milieu. Each nook was detailed with in-situ sketches and spontaneous notes, often improvised at the site, best addressing the latter’s conditions and progress. The bare blueprint has been effectively imagined by creating a quality of space that dissolves rigid hierarchy and instead catalyses meaningful dialogue around design. The contiguously woven together zones articulately hold pockets of privacy, collective discussion, and ideation while displaying a homogeneous DNA.