Among the multitude of contemporary awards in the field of architecture and design, Best Office Awards has occupied perhaps the narrowest niche at the intersection of architecture and business. True, several awards with a similar ideology already exist - suffice it to recall the Building Awards or the Commercial Real Estate Awards - but the new award, in contrast to them, has set itself the task of celebrating not the best objects in the field of commercial real estate in general, but exclusively the best interiors of offices and business centers. In addition, the organizers of the Best Office Awards - the educational project ProjectNEXT and the OfficeNEXT portal - position it as a platform for discussion and mutual training of all specialists involved in the design of corporate interiors, namely developers, architects, designers, suppliers of goods and services, owners and CEOs. companies.
All Best Office Awards events - the Office Event conference, an exhibition of promising novelties for the Office Trend Show and the award ceremony itself - were held in the unfinished business center of the City of Capitals complex in the Moscow-City MIBC, which, despite the ongoing finishing work is already actively settling in restaurants, shops and galleries. A stage was built in the middle of the atrium, and above it was an installation on the theme of the tower of the Third International by Vladimir Tatlin. The avant-garde theme, designed to symbolize all the most advanced in the field of office design, was continued on the second floor by the spectacular exposition of the Belgian artist Arne Queens, for whom Tatlin, in his own words, is the main source of inspiration in his work.
The Grand Prix Best Office Awards 2010 was awarded to the interiors of the Razvitie-Stolitsa bank located in Pozharsky lane in Moscow. This object, created by the architectural bureau Anna Kurbatova Architects, is already well known to the professional press - last year it became a laureate of the Under the Roof of a House festival. It must be said that since objects realized over the past three years could participate in the competition, there were a lot of well-known works among the nominees. For example, the St. Petersburg office of Yandex, created by the za_bor bureau, or the Capital Group office, made by the Massimo Iosa Ghini bureau and occupying, by the way, the three upper floors in the "City of Capitals". The interiors of Anna Kurbatova were singled out by the jury, first of all, for softness, lyricism and comfort. The architect really created not the most traditional corporate office - diffused light, sculptural Corian racks like the prows of yachts, ceiling panels repeating the lines of the sail more resemble the interiors of a hotel in some romantic resort. But according to Anna Kurbatova, this is exactly what a 21st century bank should be - a minimum of office paraphernalia, a maximum of space and comfort.
In addition to the Grand Prix, the founders of the award presented several special prizes. Thus, the award for "New Technologies" was received by the authors of the office of the consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers in the White Square business center, the interiors of which are distinguished not only by their stylishness, but also by the widespread use of energy efficient technologies. Two prizes were awarded for this interior: one for the authors of the interior design itself, architects of Murray O'Laoire Architects; the second - to the specialists of the company "Point of support", who have developed a special lighting control system operating on all 15 floors and saving energy consumption using motion and light sensors.
Nokia's Moscow office located in the renovated Voentorg building was awarded in the Comfort and Ergonomics nomination. Finnish architects from the bureau Gullsten-Inkinen Design & Architecture tried to level the hierarchy of employees and placed all 110 jobs in a single openspace. Traditionally, Nokia decorates all its offices in a single corporate style, but for Moscow the Finns made an exception and accentuated the local flavor in the interior, hanging, for example, lamps in the form of church domes.
The best interior of the business center was the atrium of the Linkor business center in St. Petersburg, created by the architects of Studio 44. The complex consists of two buildings, which are connected by an atrium 25 meters high. In order to get away from the banal glazing of the space between the two buildings, the architects slightly "pulled" them to each other so that the inclined walls began to resemble a moored ship. Under the transparent ceiling, on long ropes, there are lamps that look like boats carved out of wood, and a narrow white staircase leads to the upper level, which one would like to compare with a gangway. The authors of the "Linkor" interiors, the designers of the Briz-studio, were also awarded a prize.
The Vision Care InstituteTM, developed by Sergey Estrin's workshop, was recognized as the best lighting design project. NB Studio was awarded for "Space Organization", which created an office for the Yota company, filled with a variety of unusual and sometimes ironic elements.
Two awards were presented in each category for the Best Office Awards 2010. “The success of the entire project depends on how educated and open to new things the customer is,” the organizers of the award are convinced. “That is why we have two main prizes - one is awarded to the team of architects, and the other is awarded to the customer's representative.” And it's hard to disagree with this logic - the award for the best office interior would not have taken place if there were no orders for corporate interiors. However, it seems that the offices of large foreign and Russian companies are one of the few architectural genres that the economic crisis has not affected in any way. And this means that the new award has a great future.
Below is the full list of awardees:
Nomination - "NEW TECHNOLOGIES".
PricewaterhouseCoopers office design, Murray O'Laoire Architects. Architect Vuk Vukovich-Sarap. Lighting control system design - company «Fulcrum »
Nomination: "LIGHT DESIGN"
Office project The Vision Care Institute TM (Johnson & Johnson), Sergey Estrin Architectural Workshop
Nominations "COMFORT AND ERGONOMICS"
Nokia office design, Gullsten-Inkinen Design & Architecture.
Nominations "SPACE ORGANIZATION"
Yota office project, NB Studio Architectural Bureau
Nominations "BRAND AND IMAGE"
Office project Light & Design, Architectural bureau UNK project
Special nomination from ProjectNEXT for Best Concept
Interior concept Design of an atrium for the Bank of Moscow / A. S. + Architectural Bureau
Best Business Center Interior Nomination
Project of the Business Center "Linkor" (St. Petersburg), Architectural workshop "Studio 44", design studio BRIZ-studio
The Grand Prix
Bank "Development-Capital" Architectural Bureau ANNA KURBATOVA ARCHITECTS
Special prizes from media partners
AD Journal
Awarded to UNK project bureau, Light & Design projects, Hewlett-Packard
Tatlin Magazine.
Awarded by NefaResearch for the Saatchi & Saatchi project
Frame magazine
Awarded to BDGworkfutures Russia & CIS (Aurora Group) for the concept of the STS TV channel office
Spears Magazine
Architect Lana Grineva. Kit-finance office project.
