SILCOHAUS selected this project because the colour logic is indivisible from the spatial logic. Steel blue does not appear on one surface in Dandelion — it appears on every surface that matters: the painted walls, the curtain fabric, the grout lines of the glass-block partition.
Plus Concept Studio used colour not as finish but as the thread that holds an otherwise complex, multi-zone brief together. This is that piece.
© Davide Galli
From veterinary clinic to art therapy studio — the brief before the colour
The building at the centre of Dandelion's story is a 55 sqm ground-floor commercial unit in Guastalla, a small city in the Reggio Emilia province of northern Italy. Before Plus Concept Studio arrived, it was a veterinary clinic: a subdivided, compartmentalised interior whose partition logic served a completely different programme.
The building before. Guastalla, Reggio Emilia, 2024 © Plus Concept Studio
The client, Dr. Sara Benatti, is an art therapist. Her practice works with children and adults facing autism spectrum disorders, motor disabilities, and other forms of vulnerability. The spatial requirement was not simply "a studio" — it was a room that could be a waiting area, a children's activity zone, an adult workshop, a conference space, and a darkened presentation room, sometimes in sequence, sometimes simultaneously.
Dr. Sara Benatti © Davide Galli
Plus Concept Studio — led by Alessandro Veneri and Roberta Pedrini — approached the brief as a furniture-and-threshold problem before it was a colour problem. The existing floor tiles were demolished. The rear wall was partially removed to relocate and rotate a staircase to the raised level, inserting a new rounded volume that also accommodates a platform lift for reduced mobility access. The spatial skeleton was rebuilt from scratch.
"The building was stripped to its structure. What came back was not a renovation — it was a new spatial argument built inside an existing shell."
The glass-block wall as the first decision
Before the curtain tracks were installed, before the wall paint went on, the construction sequence shows the curved glass-block partition going up. This is the room's primary spatial act.
The curved glass-block partition wall, grout already set in steel blue — before the floor, before the curtains, before the furniture. © Plus Concept Studio
The wall is not straight. It follows a gentle curve that mirrors the ceiling track above it, creating a continuous arc that separates the entrance and waiting zone from the main activity space without closing either off. Natural light passes through the textured blocks in both directions, so neither side of the partition is left in shadow.
© Davide Galli
The grout between each block is steel blue. In the construction photographs, before any curtains or furniture are in place, this detail is already visible: the mortar is not white or grey as it would default to — it is the same steel blue that will eventually appear on the walls and the curtains. The colour decision was made at the earliest structural stage of the build, not as a surface finish applied at the end.
"The grout lines are not incidental. They are the first place steel blue appears in the room — before the paint, before the fabric, before any furniture arrives. The colour decision was made in concrete."
© Davide Galli
The ceiling track as spatial grammar
The curved ceiling track is the room's single most efficient piece of design. A black metal rail follows the arc of the glass-block wall and extends across the full width of the space, carrying two separate curtain runs: steel blue fabric on one side, ochre on the other.
© Davide Galli
When the curtains are drawn, the room is divided into distinct zones. When they are open, the full 55 sqm is available for conferences, easel-based activities, or group sessions. The wheeled rectangular tables can be pushed to the perimeter or concealed entirely. The track makes the spatial logic of the room visible from every position — the black curve overhead reads as a plan diagram made three-dimensional.
© Davide Galli
The two curtain colours carry their own spatial information. Steel blue follows the main activity zone and reinforces the wall colour on that side. Ochre marks the waiting and consultation area — warmer, more private, its colour temperature distinct from the cool studio register beyond. The colour shift tells you where you are before any signage does.
"Steel blue and ochre do not share the same curtain rail by accident. One colour keeps the studio register. The other marks the waiting zone. The rail is a plan drawing hung from the ceiling."
Steel blue across three materials
The colour argument in Dandelion is only legible because Plus Concept Studio applied it with precision across three separate material categories — paint, fabric, and grout — and kept it consistent across all three.
© Davide Galli
The walls on the main activity side are painted in a muted steel blue, a grey-shifted, slightly dusty tone that reads as both calm and resolute. It is not the saturated teal of a statement wall, and it is not the near-grey of an indecisive one. Against it, the natural oak archways cut into the wall surface — arched recesses that hold children's canvases at display height — read clearly without competing.
© Davide Galli
The curtain fabric matches closely enough that when the curtains are drawn against the wall, the boundary between surface and textile is intentionally ambiguous. The partition softens. The studio becomes more interior. Against the petrol blue of the utility wall — the upper cabinetry and storage zone at the far end — the steel blue reads as a deliberate contrast within the same family. Petrol is darker, more saturated, more functional in register. It marks the working end of the room. Steel blue marks the making end.
© Davide Galli
"The grout, the paint, and the fabric are not matching in the way a mood board would match them — they are coordinated in the way a spatial system coordinates its parts. The room is argued, not decorated."
The oak layer and what it holds apart
Natural oak runs through Dandelion as the neutral field against which the steel blue reads. The floor is pale oak. The bespoke cabinetry — the slotted canvas storage unit, the bookshelf, the worktop — is oak. The arched wall recesses are oak-faced. The children's table is oak.
© Davide Galli
This is not a passive choice. Oak's warmth pulls against the coolness of the steel blue without competing with it. The two sit in tension without either dominating, which is the condition the brief required: a space calm enough for therapeutic work, specific enough to be read as a designed environment rather than a neutral one.
© Davide Galli
The furniture production was handled by Montenapoleone Hub. Chairs are Pedrali. Lighting is by Wever & Ducrè, Zava Luce, and Gea Luce — pendant and recessed sources distributed to avoid a single lighting register across the multi-use floor.
© Davide Galli
The exterior of the building carries the same argument outward. Through full-height glazed frontage, the steel blue interior is visible from the street. A Paul Klee quotation is printed on the glass:
"L'arte non riproduce ciò che è visibile, ma rende visibile ciò che non sempre lo è." Art does not reproduce what is visible. It makes visible what is not always so.
© Davide Galli
"The oak does not neutralise the steel blue. It holds it at the right distance. Without the oak layer, the room would read as monochrome. With it, the colour argument becomes legible — cool against warm, structural against natural."
| Project | Dandelion Art Therapy Studio |
| Studio | Plus Concept Studio |
| Architects | Alessandro Veneri · Roberta Pedrini |
| Location | Guastalla, Reggio Emilia, Italy |
| Cclient | Dr Sara Benatti |
| Year | 2025 |
| Programme | Art therapy studio, multi-use |
| Size | 55 sqm |
| Colour Palette | Steel blue, ochre, petrol blue, natural oak |
| Key Materials | Natural oak, glass block, bespoke furniture |
| Furniture Production | Montenapoleone Hub |
| Chairs | Pedrali |
| Colours | Kerakoll Design |
| Lighting | Wever & Ducrè · Zava Luce · Gea Luce |
| Photography | Davide Galli |
Why SILCOHAUS selected this project
SILCOHAUS curates from the position that colour earns its place through structural or material logic. Dandelion makes that argument without ambiguity. Steel blue appears first in the grout of a curved glass-block wall — at the structural stage of construction, not the finishing stage. It reappears in the curtain fabric and the wall paint, applied with enough precision that the three materials read as a single decision rather than a palette exercise.
Plus Concept Studio resolved a genuinely difficult brief — a single room that must serve as waiting area, children's studio, adult workshop, and conference space — through a spatial system built from colour and a curved ceiling track. The track is the plan. The colour is the key. Neither is decoration.
The Paul Klee quotation on the front glass is not incidental. A studio for art therapy, built by designers who used colour as spatial logic, quoting a painter who argued that art makes visible what is not always visible: the building says what it is before you open the door.
© Davide Galli
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Dandelion Art Therapy Studio by Plus Concept Studio · Photography: Davide Galli · Curated by SILCOHAUS, July 2026
All images © Davide Galli. Text © SILCOHAUS 2026.
