Alchemia Lab + Showroom

The Alchemia brand was created for a friendly facial and body care series for children and adults. The concept of pure, essential materials in simple volumetric configurations was the driving idea in the design in the lab and showroom of the brand.

The space is in north Athens and was a former architectural office, accessible through a courtyard adjacent to the street.

The interior design confronts the need for optimizing the soap production flow, providing easy access to materials (glycerine, fragrances, clay), facilitating storage and packaging of the final products. Concurrently, the space needs to be easily converted from a production lab to a showroom, reception, and meeting room.

Many pieces of furniture from the former architecture office were upcycled with minor modifications: the bookcase was converted to storage for fragrances, and the drawers were reused as a packaging surface. New furniture was designed considering functionality and flexibility, provided that the space needed to be multifunctional. The design was informed by a full production simulation process.

The main change was in the materiality of the space, with facing and cladding. All stable surfaces are faced in pressed cement, providing a sense of gravity, and moveable parts become distinctive, almost floating. The color palette is earthen, as a direct reference to the raw materials of the showcased products.

PS architectural studio
(Petroula-Christina Sepeta,
Alexandros Pantelidis)