The first Quiet Room in a public space of Milan defines spaces for different ways of being and living

Studiolatte and Slalom join forces with BASE Milano to give back to the city a space that speaks a plurality of languages, where softness, sounds and inclusivity are at the service of peoples and their needs.

What does it mean to make a cultural space genuinely accessible? Accessibility often brings to mind ramps, lifts or signs, but real inclusivity goes further. It concerns how a space feels, how much noise it produces, how much it demands from the people inside it, and whether someone can step away from the crowd, even for a moment.

This is what Quiet Room, created by Studiolatte together with Slalom Acoustics at BASE Milano, is about. Designed as a shelter within a public space, it offers visitors a place to pause, breathe, pray, feed a baby, calm their senses or simply step away from too much stimulation. There is no prescribed use: the room is open to different needs, bodies and ways of being.

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The project extends BASE Milano‘s long-standing work around accessibility and inclusion, and its broader reflection on what a cultural institution can be and who it is designed for. This approach was articulated in Un’I.D.E.A. di Centro Culturale. Manifesto per un’istituzione culturale plurale (An I.D.E.A. of a Cultural Centre. Manifesto for a Plural Cultural Institution), developed through a multistakeholder process involving professionals, researchers, organisations and people with different experiences and needs.

The Quiet Room at Base Milano:

Translating research into a space

So, Quiet Room translates that research into architecture, using a physical language deliberately different from the more active spaces around it. A large textile canopy wraps the room, creating a soft boundary between the public and a more intimate dimension. Acoustic treatment, controlled light and soft surfaces reduce sensory stimulation, while informal, movable elements allow visitors to decide how to occupy the room.

For Studiolatte, the starting point was the idea of an architecture of shelter – a space that remains public and permanently accessible while creating a more intimate condition within it. The idea of intimacy here is not tied to size or privacy, but to the possibility of constructing one’s own relationship with the room.

This led to an image that is simple and familiar: the shelter we build as children, a tent or a den made from cushions and sheets, a temporary place where the outside world seems to disappear. The large canopy creates precisely this feeling of entering somewhere protected, using an image of refuge that does not need to be explained.

The design works across several sensory dimensions. Softness is perhaps its most immediate quality: vertical and horizontal surfaces are upholstered, eliminating hard edges and giving the impression of a room without corners. A large continuous seating element embraces the space, while cushions and lightweight objects can be moved and rearranged. Different densities allow for different ways of sitting, lying down, or simply holding a soft surface.

The current layout is only one possibility. The elements can be reorganized to create something closer to a living room, a playground, or a more open configuration. This flexibility was important to Studiolatte because the project was conceived as a way of reducing the distance that can sometimes exist between design and its users. Rather than asking people to adapt to the space, the space should be immediately understandable and welcoming.

That also meant questioning the idea of function itself. Quiet Room is not designed for one specific category of visitor or a single purpose. Wheelchair users should be able to move comfortably through it; adults and children can use the different seating heights; someone can sit, lie down, breastfeed, pray, withdraw from the surrounding noise or simply do nothing. Inclusion, in this sense, is less about designing for a specific group than creating enough flexibility for different needs to coexist.

The participatory approach was particularly relevant because BASE Milano approached Studiolatte for its experience with processes that involve the people who will eventually inhabit a project. The challenge was also to develop the first permanent quiet room in Milan integrated into the program of a cultural institution, making Quiet Room an experiment as much as a finished space.

Making tangible a sense of protection and belonging

Its sensory comfort is supported by a careful acoustic strategy. BASE is an intensely active environment, with a large co-working area, cultural events and a constant flow of people. For those who need to reduce sensory stimulation, sound can become a significant barrier. An acoustic analysis therefore informed the selection and distribution of sound-absorbing materials across the room, reducing reverberation and creating a perceptible separation from the surrounding environment. The aim is not complete silence, but a different acoustic condition.

This is where the role of Slalom Acoustics becomes particularly relevant. The Italian company was involved in the acoustic and material development of the room, making sound part of the architecture rather than treating materials simply as finishes. The collaboration also brings Slalom’s work around well-being into dialogue with a cultural institution, showing how companies, designers and cultural organizations can work together around collective needs.

Light was approached in much the same way. Developed with Folio, a custom-designed luminous panel allows both intensity and colour to be adjusted, making the atmosphere of the room more responsive to the people using it. Together with sound, texture and materials, light contributes to the room’s almost suspended quality: a space slightly outside ordinary time, where sensory stimulation can be lowered and a moment of rest becomes possible.

Inclusivity means accessibility and co-design

The project was developed with BASE Milano’s inclusion consultants, who work with the institution throughout the year. Accessibility was therefore part of the design process rather than a final check. The opening also became an opportunity to observe how people actually responded to the room and how they chose to use it.

Quiet Room ultimately raises a broader question about cultural architecture. If public spaces are built around an implicit idea of the visitor, who is that visitor? And what happens when design starts instead from the assumption that there is no single way of being in a cultural space?

At BASE Milano, the answer takes the form of a small, permanent architecture of refuge. Not a separate space for a specific category of people, but an infrastructure available to anyone who needs it: a place where accessibility becomes less about adapting people to architecture and more about allowing architecture to accommodate difference.