State of Play Basement Studio: They Used Wine to Build a Website. Here's How.
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Apr 8, 2026 
Meet José Rago, co-founder who drives creative and technical experimentation, and Facundo Santana, co-founder building immersive WebGL experiences from Buenos Aires. They discuss using wine to nail a WebGL texture. They explain their R&D lab that spins out tools like XMP and BasHub. They cover scaling quality with company-wide review rituals, open-sourcing work, and turning studio projects into a micro-VC.
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They Poured Wine To Make A WebGL Texture
- Basement Studio poured actual wine on a surface, scanned it, and turned it into a WebGL material to reproduce a unique texture.
- That tactile experiment illustrates their willingness to mix analog art (paintings, studio photos) with WebGL shaders for lifelike web experiences.
Lab Experiments Feed Both Clients And Products
- Basement intentionally built a lab to fund R&D so creative experiments can feed the studio's commercial work and products.
- The lab produces prototypes that become client projects, internal tools, or spin-offs like BasHub and XMCP.
Use Pride As A Fast Internal Quality Check
- Measure quality by pride and willingness to share: ask, 'Will you show it to your mom?' to decide if a release meets your internal bar.
- Complement this gut check with objective metrics (performance, engagement) to validate outcomes.