This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best possible user experience. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognizing you when you return to our site or helping our team understand which sections of the site you find most interesting and useful.
Description
At-homeness. An office as a home. We wanted employees, providers and clients to feel at home in this renovated office: an open space that enhances informal communication and play. The design does not overwhelm, it does not impose a visual corporate identity: the user’s activities and objects become the visual foreground.
Spaciousness. The office is a renovation in a building from 1962. The original space was highly partitioned, with a low ceiling, and several windows blocked. We demolished the ceiling and all partitions to create a continuous, spacious office. We softly zoned this open space to create the necessary areas: reception, working, and meeting spaces, together with a multipurpose area for parties, seminars, conferences.
Environmental extroversion. The plan has a ventilation patio in the middle. In its initial state, several windows facing the street and the patio had been blocked. We maximized natural light and ventilation by opening and enlarging all the openings. The patio becomes a translucent lantern, bringing natural light in the middle of the plan. Openable windows to all external facades and the patio guarantee cross-ventilation that alleviates Alicante’s hot summers.
Materiality and users’ actions. The material choice is based on enhancing contrast: old and new, rough and smooth. We exposed the hand-crafted timber formwork of the existing 1960s concrete structure. We juxtaposed the roughness of the concrete structure and a new oak floor, with the smoothness of plaster and glass surfaces. Shapes and colors are kept simple so that objects and people come to the foreground: Architecture as a landscape of actions.
