China Huaneng Group – Office Headquarters
The China Huaneng Group is the largest power company in China, their office headquarters are located in the prominent Chang’an Boulevard of Beijing. This Chinese office space was inspired by traditional Chinese courtyard typology, defined by a series of communal spaces and a style which attempts to express the corporation’s progressive identity. The office was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, a well known international architectural practice with offices around the world.
The design organizes the corporation and its subsidiaries around a generously scaled central atrium, which acts as the main communal space for the Huaneng “family.” A fully-glazed, thin shell structure covers the atrium and filters daylight into the space. At the heart of the atrium is a freestanding, lantern-shaped volume, which consists of an outer layer of LED tubes attached to a glass staircase that spirals around an exhibition space and a VIP meeting room. This luminous, cylindrical volume symbolizes the source of energy at the center of the company. Other common areas include a sunken garden, a sky garden, and double-height breakout spaces.
[via]
IAC Office Space – Chelsea New York
The New York office of IAC was designed by the renowned architect Frank Gehry. IAC (InterActiveCorp) is an American internet company with over 50 brands across 40 countries. The Chairman and Senior Executive is Barry Diller,who was previously head of Paramount Pictures, Fox Broadcasting and USA Broadcasting.
Completed in 2007 the office is located in the Chelsea area of New York and serves as IAC’s world headquarters. The building features more than 20 conference rooms that are equipped with the latest technology, including smart boards and high-definition video conferencing equipment. At night, with the interior lights on, the glass curtain wall becomes transparent and the concrete skelton of the building emerges to great effect. The inside of the building is no-less interesting, with most interior office walls being translucent glass enhancing the natural light pouring in through the glass exterior.
eOffice offers a variety of office space in New York, including conference facilities and meeting rooms. Click here to find out more.
[via]
Adidas Laces Office Space – Germany
Kadawittfeldarchitektur has recently completed the Adidas Laces building for Adidas in Germany. The building will serve as a new working environment for Adidas’ R&D department. The new building is located at the company’s corporate headquarters in Herzogenaurach. It will house about 1,700 designers, developers, scientists and marketing strategists.
Laces was conceived as a flexible office building. Changes in the composition and size of teams or of the entire occupying units are every bit as normal in a globally active company like adidas as the temporary integration of employees from other locations worldwide or groups of external persons.
This means that the use of space within the Office Module can be adapted to organisational changes more easily than hitherto. This reversible concept for office space is based on modular units of occupancy following the planning grid of 1.60 metres, a flexible partition system to create individual offices and meeting rooms, and on an elaborate technical pre-installation enabling media provision that also functions according to the planning grid.
[via]
Nestlé Lab – Mexico
This Nestlé flavour lab was designed by Rojkind Arquitectos, located in Querétaro Mexico the lab is where Nestlé concocts its various products and flavours. This is the second building which Rojkind Arquitectos has created for Nestlé, the first being the Nestlé chocolate museum in 2007.
This project faced some unique challenges, chief among which was the fact that Querétaro is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and so as a result of this fact there were many restrictions placed on the type of buildings that can go up and the way in which they can do so. The building is bright and bold, yet elegant and unassuming in silhouette. We especially love the playful notes that can be seen throughout the design, almost giving it a mad scientist feel befitting of any laboratory!
[Pictures Via]
Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion – Paris
In 2007 Karl Lagerfeld commissioned what Chanel called the “Mobile Art Pavilion”. The art pavilion toured the globe showcasing a series of fashion and art exhibitions. It was designed by the Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, winning the 2004 Pritzker Prize laureate’s futurist design award. The Mobile Art Pavilion has now found a permanent home at Paris’ Institut du Monde Arabe. The all white ultra sleek structure has a very modern feel to it, it will no-doubt become a must see Parisian landmark.
Japanese Architecture – A Fabricated Dream
With all the misfortune surrounding Japan in recent times, I thought it nice to focus on the vibrancy of Japanese architecture so that we may once again see what this amazing country is capable of. This wonderful space was created by the Japanese designer Yukio Kimura and is a mixture of art gallery, used bookshop and even includes a café bar – the perfect trifecta some would say!
This great piece of Japanese architecture is located in the suburbs of Osaka. It was designed by Kimura to stand out, purposely making the building conspicuous as the client wanted the store to reflect the meaning behind the store’s name. The name, Sorayumebako, roughly translates to Dreambox.
Yukio is quoted as saying: “Sorayume” is a Japanese word meaning “a fabricated dream”, that is, a dream for telling people as if you actually dreamed it. Having this concept in mind, I designed space where visitors can feel as if they stepped into another world, like a dream”.
[Pictures via WeHeart]
Milan Office – Fornari Fashion
The Fornari Group has had their Milan office redesigned by Giorgio Borruso Design, a Californian architectural firm. The Milan office is located in the Navigli section of the city and measures at around 35,000 square foot. The building previously housed a historical porcelain workshop. The Fornari Group is a family business turn Italian fashion power house, they started out in the 40s manufacturing footwear. In the late 90s they then went on to become a fully fledged fashion, design and lifestyle brand.
The office is open plan, maintaining an airy and welcoming feel. This is partly achieved by the embellished rounded corners and curved edges, yet the soft wavy structures are tempered by the hard concrete floors and partly exposed steel. The designers also had the intention of making the walls, floor and ceiling inter-mesh to such a degree that they weren’t clearly distinguishable, so that where one ends the other begins. According to Giorgio Borruso such a design gives the “illusion that there is no gravitational force; that you can walk on any surface; you can rotate the system ninety degrees, and it still works.”
Future Homes
LAVA, aka the Laboratory for Visionary Architecture, an architectural think tank claims future homes will need to create a closer synergy with nature and develop the relationship between nature, technology and humans. In a recent exhibition LAVA unveiled their vision of the future homes. Their display in Sydney can be seen up until March 31 2011. The use of IT will be paramount and will connect the whole system. The ceiling is to be constructed from ETFE to allow more light to shine through and better insulation, while costing and weighing less.
[Via Design Boom]
London Office Space- Angel Centre
Wade Scaramucci is the lead architect of the new Angel Building office space in London, which was designed by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris (AHMM). The building is on the corner of London’s Pentoville Road and St John Street, and has had a complete overhaul – so much so that Scaramucci has been quoted as saying “I wouldn’t call it a refurbishment – it’s really more of a reinvention.” The old Angel Centre was a typical 1980s office space in London, a building which was very much disliked by the surrounding Londoners.
AHMM had two key ideas they wanted to implement for this dated office space in London. The first was to strip the building back to its concreate frame and extend towards the street. They also wanted to create a more seamless synergy between the inside and outside. The opening was therefore made into a promenade type area, from street to atrium. The office space looks great, modern, sleek and elegant.
nhow Hotel – Berlin
nhow Berlin is the new brand of the Spanish NH Hotel chain. According to the hotel, nhow is all about being ‘unconventional, life affirmative, constantly in movement, locally rooted while at home anywhere in the world — an idea, in other words, corresponding to lifestyle of the new creative class.’
The hotel opened in November 2010 and placed design, art and music at the heart of what it wanted to achieve. Therefore, in essence the hotel seeks to be the lifestyle hotel of choice among the burgeoning music scene in Berlin. So much so that the hotel even features its very own nhow Music Sound Floor, which is run by Hansa Studios – a place where singers such as U2, REM and David Bowie have recorded!
The architecture is by Sergei Tchoban, and has a striking presence compared to its surroundings. The interior is by the internationally known Karim Rashid, whose signature style is Pop Art – as you can clearly see from the interior! We absolutely love this hotel, it has strong principals and looks to die for, who wouldn’t want to stay at such a top class hotel?
