Matter Studios, Bath

2024 RIBA South West & Wessex Award

Matter Studios, Bath
Stonewood Design for Matt Wright
Contract value: Confidential
GIA: 366m²

Matter are a product innovation consultancy based in a historic building in the centre of Bath. Originally built as a carriage works, their premises had changed use several times and was carved up into a warren of poorly connected spaces without much natural light. Architects Stonewood Design have transformed it into a more open, welcoming, flexible studio that supports, frames and shapes how the company works. 

Due to the confidential nature of their design work, Matter are not always able to showcase their projects, so the studio needs to convey their ethos and personality. The attention to detail is obsessive, joyful, and inventive – a spirit that extends from the fine metal entrance gates, through the front of house lighting and worktops, to the storage and pipework in the toilets. When you have an idea and your client just nips out back and makes it, you have a dream project.

There are two glazed entrance porches, both opening on to a new central ‘design corridor’ containing a large table for meetings and presentations, as well as the office kitchen. Putting social interactions and wellbeing at the heart of the studio, this is an inspired move. Behind the kitchen is a window on to a workshop where prototypes or mock-ups of ideas can be made. Upstairs is an open-plan workspace. 

Internally the building had been hacked around over the years. It is not listed, so it was possible to make some important strategic moves that dramatically increase the sense of space, like removing ceilings, adding rooflights and cutting back floors in places to visually connect different rooms. Something refreshing is the make-do-and-mend way that equal value has been given to all elements of the fabric, whether they are bespoke new items or standard, crude building materials. In one room where a ceiling was removed, trusses made with basic stamped metal connecting plates have just been left exposed; and where a new cut-out was made in a concrete floor, the cutter marks and metal deck formwork are visible. That said, Matter did employ a heritage consultant to understand the importance of the fabric and Stonewood Design applied a very light touch to the building envelope. It is evident that every decision has been carefully considered, and there is a strong enough hierarchy that the bigger moves remain legible.

It is obvious both architect and client have enjoyed working together in what must have been an intense and challenging process to create a studio that reflects so well the character of its occupants.

See the rest of the RIBA South West and Wessex winners here. And all the RIBA Regional Awards here.

To see the whole RIBA Awards process visit architecture.com.

RIBA Regional Awards 2024 sponsored by EH Smith and Autodesk