Premises with a total area of about 1000 sq.m. in the plan it has the shape of an elongated rectangle. Here the architects had to place not only the workplaces of Netlife Research employees, but also several meeting rooms, a recreation area, a winter garden and a server room.
The situation was complicated by the fact that the room itself had practically no windows and did not have high ceilings, which automatically provided the future office with a dense twilight almost from the very morning. Therefore, the most important task for Eriksen Skajaa Architects was not even finding the optimal layout of the working space, but working on a lighting scenario that could more than compensate for the lack of natural light.
The interior design is predictably dominated by white - the walls and partially the ceilings are painted in it (its main decoration is the air ducts released outside). The floor is covered with a rubber covering, also in light shades, and most of the meeting and work areas are boxes with walls made of transparent or frosted glass. In the latter case, additional lamps are placed behind the frosted glass, so that the volume itself on the scale of the entire office begins to "work" like a large lamp.
Another important spatial reference point is the axis of the central corridor, which, unlike the rest of the interior, is decorated in black.
In order to compensate for the monochrome of the resulting interior, architects are actively introducing greenery into it. We are talking both about real plants - there are several mini-gardens in the office at once - and about inserts of the corresponding color. For example, employees' personal locker doors and upholstered furniture in the recreation area are painted in different shades of green. As for the gardens, here the architects also provided several options: one greenhouse is fenced off with a wooden fence ("forest"), the second is placed in a rack with niches imitating arched windows (for which the structure is nicknamed "the monastery"), the third is an impressive curbstone with flower pots of different sizes.
The window decoration deserves a separate mention - instead of the standard window sills, the architects enclosed each opening in a wide wooden frame. The employees of the company willingly use the resulting "boxes" as places for reading, personal telephone conversations or just a short rest.
A. M.
