Mail.ru Group moved to a new 27-storey building on Leningradsky Prospekt at the end of August, but the final design of the headquarters of this one of the largest Internet companies in the Russian-speaking segment of the Web is completed only now.
The total area of the new office is about 28 thousand square meters. However, one of the towers of the SkyLight business center on Leningradsky Prospekt was chosen not only for the sufficient amount of space - almost the main criterion in its favor was the location: the previous office of Mail.ru Group was located practically in the next building and most of all the company did not want to lose during the move, some of the employees who might find it inconvenient to travel to work in another district of Moscow.
The project for the new headquarters was selected in a competition held by Mail.ru about two years ago. It was attended by as many as 19 companies, among which the UNK project was recognized as the authors of the best concept. According to the chief architect of the project, Nikolai Milovidov, the stake was then made on a mobile, maximally free and functional space - and upon completion of construction, it can be argued that most of the design and conceptual solutions proposed by UNK project at the competition were embodied in their original form. “The customer formulated his main wish for the future office as follows: the new headquarters should become an effective HR tool,” says Nikolay Milovidov. - In other words, it had to be so good and convenient that no less than financial conditions serve as an excuse to come to work at Mail.ru. And we think we managed to make it attractive in every sense."
Among the main “socially attractive” functions of the new office is a universal sports hall (the only one in Russia inside an office with a size suitable for playing football), which, if desired, can be easily converted into a congress hall for 585 seats, its own fitness center with an area of 600 sq. m with a gym and rooms for group exercises, a cinema. The universal hall, by the way, was originally conceived as a suspended one: the existing volume was used for sports, and for organizing conferences, at the touch of a button, the inclined amphitheater had to descend into the center of the hall directly from the ceiling, at the same time forming both the hall and the foyer. “This idea was thoroughly worked out by us technically (the experience of designing theaters helped), and we had to abandon it only due to the lack of a concept of suspended premises for the mass stay of people in the current regulatory framework,” says Nikolai Milovidov. Versatility is generally one of the strong points of the office. A sports hall and a cinema are transformed into conference rooms, meeting rooms into offices and vice versa, and any white vertical surface, be it a wall, a column or a cabinet door, serves as a marker board a few steps from any workplace or chair in the meeting room.
Here, next to the spaces of the small and large atriums, all meeting rooms and recreation areas are located, as well as a restaurant and a counter for the production of freshly squeezed juices. Nikolay Milovidov emphasizes that the project involved the creation of the most "graded" space in terms of opportunities for individual and collective work. Take at least the round sofas in the "lounge" area: everything inside the sofa is aimed at active communication, and outside, on the contrary, you can quietly sit alone with a cup of coffee. There are even places in the building where no one will find you - for example, small niches in the walls where you can climb with a laptop.
It is important that all public areas are as open as possible. Their walls are made of glass, so that every potential employee, going for an interview, from his first visit to the office sees everything that Mail.ru can offer to his team, except for work: shake the hardware, do yoga, drink fresh juice or smoke comfortably in the smoking room. One of the office floors is also facing the same atrium, so you can see your “own” workplace.
The principle of maximum transparency and openness is also the basis for the layouts of the "working" floors. On the one hand, this was done for the sake of creating maximum communication opportunities for employees, and on the other, for the sake of stunning views of Moscow that open from the tower on Leningradka. “The theme of openness and transparency has become a kind of design code for this office, and all other design decisions are based on the idea that“the view is always with you,”comments Nikolai Milovidov. The open-space layout helps to preserve the view for each of the floors - an exciting perspective of Moscow always opens up to any employee. And only on the topmost VIP-floor, architects were forced in some cases to make blank partitions, but they were covered with mirrors, so that the illusion of an endless landscape is preserved here as well. Interestingly, even the president of the company has a worse view than at the reception on this floor - he deliberately sacrificed a gorgeous view for the sake of a first impression for his guests.
However, back to the typical office floor. Workspaces are freely located around the elevator shaft, but in order to give them individuality and help employees navigate, architects divide each of the floors into two parts and designate them either in orange or blue - the corporate colors of Mail.ru. But the furniture was chosen in a neutral white color, and only multi-colored poufs here and there "dilute" it. The desks of the employees are arranged in the form of daisies or stars, as the architects themselves call them. And although such an unusual configuration of workplaces at first seems more costly in terms of space than traditional "squares" and "rulers" of tables, UNK project were able to use them to provide the required number of workplaces on the floor. The main advantage of "chamomile", as Nikolai Milovidov explains, is that all employees sit in a circle relative to their neighbor, and to communicate with a colleague or even the entire project team at once, it is enough just to turn the chair 90 degrees.
The clusters are delimited among themselves rather conditionally, with the help of white geometric "curtains", and even those do not hang everywhere, but only where they are needed by the employees themselves. In addition, on each floor, individual collapsible glass "cubes" are provided, which can serve as meeting rooms or offices for those who need privacy in their work. Their area is 12 square meters, and the dimensions of the elements strictly correspond to the dimensions of the existing freight elevator in the building, so that when disassembled, this room can easily be moved between floors. For a typical floor of 800 sq. m UNK project provided 4 standard points of connection of the "cube" to utilities, which allows you to very quickly "build" an additional office in almost any required place.
The architects proudly emphasize that the Mail.ru headquarters is, firstly, the most athletic office in Moscow (the total area of training spaces exceeds 1000 sq. M), and secondly, the most thought-out office in terms of space organization. for different levels of communication. Also, in fact, each of its premises has several possible options for use both for work and outside it, and from the numerous "chips" for employees, a unique image of the company as a whole is formed.
