Sanofi-Aventis chose its new office - in a business center built on the site of the Minsk Hotel - primarily for its extremely convenient location in the very center of the city, on one of its main streets. However, this geographical advantage also had its weaknesses: in particular, the building on Tverskaya had very strict height restrictions, which inevitably led to the appearance of floors with rather low ceilings. At the very first acquaintance with the rented premises, Sergey Estrin and his team realized that the main thing they would have to deal with was the feeling of crushing floors. The original layout of the floors could not be called too successful - they are cut in the center by a rectangular atrium, but its area is incommensurably smaller than the area of the floor itself, and therefore it is actually "lost" in space.
“The first sketches turned out to be very boring: a tiny atrium,“thick”rooms around its perimeter, a bunch of communications that could not be moved anywhere,” recalls Sergey Estrin. - I turned this plan this way and that, until finally I came up with the idea of punching through the floors with several passages that are not parallel to each other. There are four such corridor axes in total, and only two of them intersect at right angles and reproduce the rigid geometry of the atrium, while the other two are completely out of sync. Their width also varies - they either narrow, then expand, sometimes even completely interrupted by open meeting rooms, thanks to which the architects managed to get rid of the visual monotony that most often distinguishes office corridors. It is also important that each of the resulting galleries does not end with a banal dead end, but is focused on the premises, which, in turn, are turned into the atrium, or overlook the winter garden. This fills rather narrow passages with additional light and "air", and most importantly allows you to create very different angles, making the corridors completely different from each other.
The architects tried to partially compensate for the modest height of the floors due to very low raised floors and thin cladding of the ceilings themselves (perforated gypsum plasterboards were used for this purpose), but most of the work on "keeping" the ceiling at the proper level, of course, was taken by the lamps. In some corridors, the architects used elongated lamps comparable in length to the galleries themselves and giving even light light, in others, on the contrary, they used multidirectional tiny lamps inserted into decorative slits, dividing the space into separate segments. Special fluorescent lamps were used in the winter garden areas, and for meeting rooms, conference rooms, coffee points and reception desks, the architects chose large round shades that are unmistakably identifiable with tablets - the main product of Sanofi-Aventis.
The main negotiation company is adjacent to the winter garden, and customers put forward special requirements for its design. In particular, the architects were tasked to provide for the possibility of darkening the glass facing the garden in cases where confidential meetings and presentations not intended for prying eyes are taking place in the meeting room. On the same glass, customers asked to place a map of Russia, which would indicate the cities where Sanofi-Aventis is present. “In fact, we had to come up with a transparent map, otherwise the negotiation room would be cut off from the green zone,” explains Sergey Estrin. - We solved this non-trivial problem with the help of laminated glass. One of its layers is made of glass with a liquid crystal film, which can be darkened, and the second is a triplex with an engraved perimeter of the card. The architects also installed LEDs on conductive transparent glue to each city in the country - if desired, the customer can light those settlements in which he works, and as the business expands, connect all new cities. In the description, this idea sounds rather cumbersome, but thanks to this very solution, the card itself turned out to be light and translucent like a cobweb and does not prevent the plants from being part of the interior of the meeting room.
Another glass element - both functional and decorative - appeared in the company's interior almost by accident. Already at the stage of project implementation, it turned out that there is a ventilation stand in front of the reception area, which the owner of the building is not going to move anywhere, and Sergey Estrin invented it to disguise it with the help of a translucent fence, on which the words of the company's mission are inscribed on the side of the entrance. This laconic screen not only sets off the dynamic silhouette of the snow-white-blue reception desk, but also successfully zones the entrance space - visitors can leave clothes behind it, couriers - mail or New Year's gifts.
Sanofi-Aventis' corporate color is deep blue, and it is featured on all four floors rented by the company. However, given its richness, architects tried to use it with caution. And if in the entrance area this tone is predictably dominant, then in other spaces it is present in the form of separate accents, and is complemented by sandy yellow, light gray, light blue and orange. Thanks to this variety of palette, the Sanofi-Aventis office looks comfortable and light, emphasizing both the scale of this company and its future orientation.
