offices

When we think about an office headquarter, we think of a landmark, a tall building situated in a busy CBD. What if the headquarter roots on the edge of the city, one foot in the countryside? Could we embrace the rural qualities in this contemporary fashion headquarters? A few years ago, we were approached with this question. The request was a campus that celebrated the unique culture of the company, evoked the spirit of the brand, “Be different”, and create cohesion between two contrasting identities – that of the city dweller, the new urbane, modern China, and that of the traditionalist.

New Zealand’s favourite shopping centre, Sylvia Park, with its wide selection of retailers complemented by entertainment and dining options, has already become a destination in itself. The addition of the first commercial office building on site supports the centre’s ambitions to transform into a metropolitan town centre. A master planning exercise determined the site for the first of several planned office buildings. ANZ Raranga is located close to the mall’s heart, ‘The Cone’, and extends the existing restaurant precinct westward.

In 2016, the Mayor of Tourcoing and Nord-France Invest supported Booking.com’s desire to move to new premises in the region. Booking.com wanted to find a place accessible by public transport, around 7,000m², equipped with completely open office floors offering compact working spaces, large relaxation, and meeting spaces.

KeenSystems headquarters is situated along the ring road around the village of Gemert. The decision to not establish their new office building for the rapidly expanding telecom provider in the city of Eindhoven comes from the desire to operate from a very much green and inspiring environment. Their technology does not necessarily needs a physical relation with a city or a high-tech campus.

Mr. X, the fictitious name of the client, was a former creative director from an international agency. He started a new page for his career by forming his own company with several other colleagues. During his search for the new office, he has seen a lot of places with typical glass-partitioned meeting rooms, managers’ offices, and rows of working desks. He reflected on his past agency life in the large corporation and understood that was not a working space that he was looking forward to. Hence, with the same amount of budget, he found a much larger unit inside an old industrial building and commissioned us to turn it into his ideal office.

Business incubator including co-working space, meeting rooms, economic services of the community of communes, workshops, for about 40 entrepreneurs. The territory of the Estuary community of communes is part of an approach to promote innovation, particularly in the field of renewable energy. In this context, the new business incubator had to be a showcase building, attractive to entrepreneurs, and reflecting its vocation. The programme gives pride of place to the large common areas, and the project extends this desire through its design: the offices all look out over the park, to the south, and are accessible via passageways opening onto a full-height hall, encouraging emulation.