Stacked Wooden Cabinets Make up Stunning Artists’ Residence

High-end Netherlands retailer De Bijenkorf partnered with Netherlands national museum Rijksmuseum to create an artist-in-residence program in an Amsterdam De Bijenkorf department store. Calling on i29 Interior Architects to help with the transformation of a small space on the building’s roof. Appropriately called “Room on the Roof,” the studio space is a series of wooden volumes stacked atop one another, making for a sort of “Alice in Wonderland” type of cabinet in which artists can live and work temporarily. Wooden ladders connect each level of the cabinet, taking visitors up from the entry to the work/storage area and then up to a small bed in a cozy wooden cubbyhole.

The cabinets don’t make up the entire residence, however. The room extends into a slightly larger living space where the walls and furnishings are all a clean, soft white. A metal spiral staircase leads from the artists’ residence up to the cupola at the very top of the building’s tower.