Reflections on the STUA headquarters project, by Jon Gasca
IDEAS THAT HAVE GUIDED OUR PROJECT
It is often thought that successful entrepreneurial stories begin in youth, but my father, Jesús Gasca, an engineer by profession, founded STUA in the late 1980s, in his prime, when he was over 40 years old. The company’s origins were always focused on internationalisation. For my father, furniture had to be able to be shipped anywhere in the world at low cost, be lightweight, stackable or collapsible without being fragile, as any incident on the other side of the globe would be very costly to resolve. Until very recently, the tool used to achieve this goal of internationalisation was furniture fairs (the Salone del Mobile in Milan, IMM Cologne, etc.). There was no other way to reach an interior designer in New York and Tokyo at the same time. For decades, furniture companies have made an enormous effort to showcase their creative universe, and these fairs have been the meeting point for distributors, architects and interior designers from all over the world.
But now that the pandemic is over, this formula has become obsolete: the economic cost to companies is enormous, the ephemeral architecture of hundreds of stands that last a week does not meet any sustainability parameters, and visitors suffer unnecessary stress and mistreatment by concentrating in three or four days an amount of information about new products and brands that is absolutely incompatible with their mental and physical well-being. We have been aware of this for years, but no one dared to take a stand, and we all continued to feed the cycle.
During the pandemic, activity at trade fairs came to a standstill to avoid physical contact, and brands discovered that not only did social media continue to function as a showcase, but there was another way to display our products, one that was more intimate, more human, and that was to invite professionals from all over the world to visit our home. Hence the need to create a new space that better reflected our philosophy. At that time, we were already moving to a larger factory with better technology and a gigantic automated warehouse that helps us achieve the fastest delivery times in the industry. What better environment to invite and welcome professionals from around the world than a space dominated by large windows and the calm provided by the bamboo forest in front of us?
OUR FACTORY AND OUR SHOWROOM ARE OUR IDENTITY
STUA has always been more a company of deeds than words. Perhaps because we are engineers and Basques, we have never tried to build an identity beyond that provided by the product itself. We are sparing in explaining our product.
This new headquarters finally allows us to show our visitors how we manufacture our furniture, with complete honesty. The building speaks for itself. See how the forest opposite has been respected, how we use solar energy for manufacturing, or our team’s working environment. The aesthetics of the building also represent our ethics.
We can truly talk about a new era in the European furniture sector, in which companies and customers place greater value on transparency and showing our factories, in contrast to imported products whose origins are somewhat obscure (applying the parameters of corporate social responsibility as we understand it in Europe). Professionals appreciate visiting the company’s premises because it not only enriches their contact with the brand, but also with the environment where the brand conceives its creative universe. Any brand identity is built on the tradition where that brand was created. To give you an example: we would never launch an uncomfortable chair, simply because the importance we place on gastronomy in our region (where we have 23 Michelin-starred restaurants) means that we want the most comfortable chairs in the world to enjoy the dining experience.
LOW DESIGN TO CREATE NEW CLASSICS
What we call ‘slow design’ is in our DNA. We are not in a hurry to produce new products and take the time necessary to create our designs. STUA has never followed the furniture industry’s schedule for new products, which is governed by an unwritten rule that requires companies to present one or more new products at each trade fair every year. My father, Jesus Gasca, and I have always valued design quality over quantity. To give you an idea, Jesus began designing the Gas chair in 1986 and it took him 14 years to create it. It was launched in 2000 and today, twenty-five years later, it is as alive as it was on the first day.
When creating spaces, we do not get carried away by short-term trends. Although we are aware that every building or interior design bears the mark of the time in which it was conceived, we know that there are miracle pieces that transcend their era, and our effort, as designers, consists of bringing to light those pieces that we admire so much and achieving the longevity of their style with our designs.
NATURE AND ARCHITECTURE
Two factors came together when defining the building. In the Basque Country, we are extremely fortunate that both cities and industrial areas are surrounded by lush vegetation. In our case, we were lucky enough to locate the new factory on the banks of a river with a bamboo forest over 9 metres high, which we decided to keep completely untouched when the building was constructed. We wanted to demonstrate that the industrial environment, with the right regulation and sensitivity, can also be sustainable.
On the other hand, sunlight is a scarce commodity in this area, as it always rains, so much of the building was designed with glass in mind, thinking mainly of the people who work inside. This starting point led us to avoid the showrooms that focus all the visitor’s attention on the interior with those chiaroscuro effects on the product that we are used to seeing at trade fairs. We wanted workers and visitors to be able to sit and look out at the forest through the windows. We are not afraid of them being distracted by the beauty of the outside, and at the same time, we wanted the outside to reflect nature in a controlled way, creating a subtle mirror effect on the building that would not disturb the environment or the birds in the area, and would make it “disappear” to a certain extent.
The building’s facade were designed in the style of burnt wood from the Japanese ‘Yakisugi’ tradition. Our project sought to be integrated into nature, not to integrate nature into the project. We still have steps to take in that direction, and it will take years, such as certain façades that are prepared to be covered by vegetation. At STUA, we want nature to always win.