Places of work define organisations through their capacity to represent a professional home base for productivity. Scroll down to see Frameweb's global collection of ten top offices for companies feeding and fostering creativity through space.
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Le Coruscant by Brenac & Gonzalez
PARIS – Brenac & Gonzalez architects enriches the surrounding Saint-Denis district with a sky-high office building coated with an aluminium origami skin which combines a medley of contemporary design with attention to environmental factors. The construction has high levels of energy efficiency, reducing thermal loss by limiting window space to 50 per cent on the façade. The usage of floor-to-ceiling French windows helps improve ventilation as well as providing a praiseworthy daylight-factor coefficient. See more projects by Brenac & Gonzalez in Mark #60.
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Squint/Opera Headquarters by Sibling
MELBOURNE – Sibling's office interior for the film and animation studio Squint/Opera is a phygital reality. Transformed software grids form an infrastructural matrix while housing a plant nursery under an eerie glow of magenta light that spurs plant growth. This workstation concept blends physical and digital realms into a new world to manipulate human perception and trigger creativity.
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JAPAN – Kamitopen's office concept stimulates the senses to connect the work and minds of Yurdo's staff. A cut-out surface resembling the nervous system serves as a unified desk to trigger signals of creative collaboration. With an opening function of the 'synapses', the space remains functional while encouraging free movement. As means of communication, bursts of rainbow 'speaking tubes' connect departments for when visitors arrive, filling the space with friendly fun.
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Lenne Office by KAMP Arhitektid
TALLINN – Located in a former Soviet-era factory of Estonia's capital, Lenne's office resembles a wooden parkland reserved for recreation. Following the brands playful character, KAMP Arhitektid separated the large space into a multilevel landscape with separate cosy zones and unexpected additions such as children-like, shaped door handles and a row of 3-m-tall desktop lamps that turn employees into a doll-like scale. See more office spaces with a ‘health kick’ in Frame #108's Frame Lab.
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Apester&Co-Cyles Space by Roy David Studio
TEL AVIV – A unified working environment for two creative companies – Apester and Co-Cyles – was designed by Roy David Studio. Laid out in a newly-renovated building, the office interior retains an industrial feel. Composed of two stories, the ground floor leads to an upper patio where employees can gaze into the panoramic view that inspires them to dream, imagine and create. Comments the architect, ‘The firms were searching for a design that would be characterised as being youthful, innovative and one that has an overall coherent style. The materials were specially chosen in order to accentuate an architectural discourse dictated by industrial and lo-fi design elements.’
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Lightspeed Headquarters by ACDF
MONTREAL – A former Canadian station slash hotel opened in 1989 has since turned into the headquarters of software developer Lightspeed. ACDF Architects mix worn in elements such as bricks, wood and metals with a layer of minimalist illusions to reflect the fast-paced development of the company’s activities. See more of ACDF's projects here.
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Mediabank Headquarters by Hassell
MELBOURNE – Australia’s leading health provider Medibank starts with its employees, establishing a headquarters that reflects the organisation’s wholesome lifestyle values. In collaboration with its partners, Hassell design practice realised a building that is hardwired for health and topics such as the psychology of exercise and causes of absenteeism. Encouraging physical activity throughout the day, stairs and ramps enable staff and visitors to move freely and intuitively between floors and offices, generating a new form of working, and representing Medibank’s three-pronged vision of health as a holistic state of mind, body and social engagement. See more projects by Hassell.
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NEW YORK – No wonder this vibrant creature debuted in Frame 109, the colour issue, it practically lives and breathes the subject. Asked by Bēhance to design an installation for its New York City office, SOFTlab responded by linking the two-storey space with an affixed sculpture, visible from all corners of the workplace. The netted installation is made from a laser-cut Mylar clad with matching photo gels of different colours to act as a frame, drawing attention to a circular luminaire at its peak and communal seating at its base.
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LONDON – Studiofibre embodies a spatial identity for Farfetch's global community. Within an industrial shell structure of the existing interior, a mixed palette in which hand-picked pieces meet in-house designed objects for a contemporary aesthetic and an impression of the visionary shopping experience that the company offers.
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ROKI Research Facility by Tetsuo Kobori Architects
HAMAMATSU – Tokyo-based firm Tetsuo Kobori Architects designed a new research and development facility in the city for automotive filtration company ROKI that seeks to inspire such innovations among its workforce. The ROKI Global Innovation Center – or ‘ROGIC’ – comprises a massive, arching roof composed of a hybrid wood and steel trusses, draping over a single room that is partitioned by multiple tiers and walls to create unique outdoor and indoor spaces. Internal offices may be opened to the outdoors by sliding glass panels and skylights that admit ample natural light even when closed.
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More great office designs feature in Frame's The Other Office 2, and there is lots of workspace food-for-thought in the forthcoming must-read book Spaces for Innovation.