Corporate Offices (under 5000sqm)
Gold: Gensler, Pixel Factory
Hyundai Card’s Pixel Factory uniquely blends the highly digital with the highly human, says Gensler’s design director Philippe Pare.
As Hyundai Card moves towards an increasingly digital culture, seeking to deliver its digital-focused design innovation to customers, the firm required a new work environment; one that would reflect its new genesis whilst helping its employees flourish and thrive.
Gensler set out to create an environment which would help the firm optimise, attract and retain the talent that it needs to focus and succeed in its digitalisation effort, whilst helping its employees flourish in a vibrant and comfortable space.
Finished with a simple, yet bold colour palette, as well as minimalist furniture and fixtures, the 32,000 sq ft space offers a “refined industrial” canvas as a background to daily activities.
The menu of flexible layouts goes beyond the soundbooth and the library: the space offers moveable meeting rooms, transformable work tables, DJ booths and gardens, that can be tailored to employees’ moods and mindset.
In keeping with the industrial aesthetic, environmental graphics and wayfinding programme is largely based on factory graphics with a raw and unpolished design language.
Finally, as the space is highly connected with a wide range of digital devices, Gensler turned the unsightly cables into a focal point by creating a bright overhead conveyor belt to house them to physically and symbolically connect the teams throughout the space.
Silver: Matrix Design, Matrix Office
Located in Shenzhen, China, this new office space design project by Matrix Design covers a total area of 700sqm, and the completion date is February 2019. In this continued, restructured and representational space design, white walls and wood veneer with warm color and ruggedly steel frame material multi level texture contrast, combined with gray cement block their unique visual impact. In ornate natural space still shows unique charm, this is our new interpretation way for office space.
Corporate Offices (over 5000sm)
Gold: Rapt Studio, Norwest Venture Partners San Francisco
As a leading venture capital firm with a growing presence in San Francisco, Norwest sought to establish an office in which to meet with entrepreneurs, host industry events, and offer special programs for the start-ups they support. Rapt worked with the firm to create a welcoming, cross-functional space in the city’s exclusive South Park neighborhood.
In the open plan, separate areas are delineated through materiality. Past the reception desk, which is designed like a jackknife and can convert to a registration area during events, is a living room with inlaid leather flooring and warm lighting. Beyond, a marble serving block and extended wood tables are perfect for catered dinners. To the right, chairs wrap around a fireplace for the firm’s characteristic fireside chats; to the left, rooms encased in glass let in natural light and provide space for meetings, conferences, and calls. Individual offices sit near a wall showcasing successful projects the firm has seen through. Furniture in the center of the 7,000 sq ft space can be moved aside to make room for gatherings.
Throughout, details influenced by hospitality and residential design conspire to create an inviting, inclusive space that's at once spacious and sophisticated. Featuring furniture by local artists and smaller, well-respected industry partners, the space solidifies the firm’s value of supporting small businesses. And now Norwest can do more of what they do best: help young entrepreneurs take their businesses where they want them to go.
Silver: Clive Wilkinson Architects, Valve Headquarters
Valve's new headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, consists of 12,590sqm of office and amenity space spanning nine consecutive floors for over 500 employees. The company's steady growth and recent expansion into virtual reality and hardware development prompted the popular video game developer to relocate to the newly completed Lincoln Square, a 31-storey mixed-use development just down the street from their previous offices.
Valve's primary goals were to support growth, attract and retain top talent, and foster collaboration. Although creative and playful, their workforce is seasoned and sophisticated, and the company wanted the design and materials to reflect that. Working with a Bellevue-based executive architect, the design team implemented a dynamic design solution that incorporated flexible workspace for the company’s software and hardware departments with a cafeteria, café spaces, gym and shower facilities, audio suites, a merchandise display room, a motion capture room, and multiple children's and family play rooms.
Building on Valve’s deep-rooted cabal system of self-organized, multidisciplinary project teams, the new workplace is supported by a variety of open and enclosed collaboration spaces. The flexible and interactive floor plan allows project teams to expand and contract as necessary around specific production needs. The cabals combine dedicated meeting spaces with semi-enclosed work pods that provide additional privacy for more “heads-down” work. More importantly, the circulation path supports the free flow of people moving throughout the office as well as the free flow of work-desks-on-wheels, as developers are constantly moving between the cabals to travel from team to team.
Bronze: MCM Architecture, ITV Campus
London TV is both a television broadcaster and a global content producer making programmes for other broadcasters around the world. Its historical head office is on the Southbank and it was decided to move out of the 40-year-old building for five years whilst the old building was demolished. The MCM team was engaged to develop the interiors to reflect the ITV vision and brand across three new spaces totalling 170,000 sq ft. The challenging programme, has resulted in new accommodation that has been embraced by everyone who uses it. Not only has it succeeded in bringing people together and giving them the opportunity to work more efficiently and more creatively, but it has both retained and enhanced ITV’s personality. ITV have now adopted the new space as their permanent home as opposed to moving back to the tower.
Studios, Co-working Spaces and Home Office
Gold: dwp, Glowfish Offices
The Glowfish Office concept of ‘Work, Play, Grow’ sets a new standard for modern coworking space. The third branch of Glowfish Offices are located on the busy 19th and 20th floor of the Sathorn Nakorn building with 1,744sqm space, opening in May 2019.
Glowfish serviced offices, ready-to-use meeting rooms (that can be rented hourly) and event spaces; serve high-performance local and international ‘millenial’ start-up companies, scaleup, SMEs and large organisations who need a temporary hub.
dwp’s innovative office design is conceptualised to increase productivity, support business growth as well as customers’ lifestyle choices by creating a relaxed, creative interior with natural light, practical facilities, and a sustainable space.
The design concept is a homey, urban lifestyle atmosphere that provides privacy and warmth. Industrial, raw and natural materials were mainly used for this project: concrete, wood, metal and a vertical garden to soften the environment, mood and tone.
The active reception with barista bar and hot desk working area is a hub formed from concrete and surrounded by a natural, green environment. The design reflects the inclusive culture and partnership approach to working with clients. The reception opens up to the larger community space that provides a single location for staff to work, socialise and hold community events.
Silver: studioshaw, Kindred
Kindred is a unique and original concept which aims to address the contemporary needs of Londoners. London is home to entrepreneurs and freelance workers and a young and inventive community. Kindred offers something new for this demographic, somewhere to work, meet others and crucially to engage with like minded others over a shared evening meal.
When we first visited this unique building we thought it was a perfect home for this concept. The building’s western facade is a rare and exquisite example of the English Baroque style. The top floor interiors include fine-quality early-C18 panelling and carved decoration salvaged from the original house. As the building has had several histories, our design strategy was to expose and celebrate the structural frame and other original parts and clearly express the new interventions with contemporary detailing.
We felt that the design should be unique like the Kindred concept, but crucially should be uplifting and timeless. We used high quality long lasting materials such as solid brass and marble as well as upgrading the environmental performance of the existing fabric where possible for example secondary glazing the original sash windows.
After an initial client meeting in February 2018, The project started in site in August 2018 with Listed Building Consent and was opened to the public at the beginning of January 2019. The key to this fast and successful design and site period was early contractor engagement and an efficient design process with high levels of client input.
Bronze: DAGA Architects, Dongsi 5Lmeet
Dongsi 5Lmeet is located in a narrow Hutong alleyway within Second Ring Road in Beijing. The project itself was an abandoned soy sauce factory surrounded by the old gray-tiled buildings . It is not far from the historical Duan Qirui Prime Minister’s Office, and next door is the old residents living for decades. 5Lmeet is an innovative space in an old community. Facade design is always very challenging in Hutong alley that can not against the gray historic environment. A lot of tile pile up to form part of the wall in the entrance.The design concept of the project is originated from enclosing culture of traditional Chinese courtyard. The “floating island” is formed by cutting the floor, the traditional architectural culture view is expounded with modern technique. This transparent display space in the internal space becomes the most important feature . “Floating island” becomes the most efficient use of the region with a hundred activities per month.The project space is very cramped and dark before renovation. So firstly cut some large holes to connect different floors and allow sunlight come in from roof, make internal space more rich. At the same time the patio is also a good advertising and art installation display area, make space more flexible and creative.Combination of “floating”exhibition space and old beams shows the historical memory. A huge white lighting film in the ceiling of underground co-working space make the exhibition space above looks like “floating” in sky as the visual center.
