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      ACDF outfits Montreal FlightHub office with vibrant colours

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      Curving glass walls and brightly coloured curtains for partitioning workspaces are among the details Canadian studio ACDF Architecture has used in an office renovation for a Montreal travel agency. FlightHub, an online travel agency, asked the local studio to design a workspace to accommodate the expanding operations in its Montreal headquarters.

      The office occupies 12,800 square feet (1,189 square metres) and spans an entire floor. Its design is intended to embody the agency’s three key elements: technology, travel and tribes.

      Private offices, open-plan workstations and conference rooms are set up around the perimeter of the floor and divided into the company’s teams.
      In the centre a circular room houses communal spaces, including a reception area, kitchen, lounge and game room.

      “The design includes common areas at its core, with distinct ‘tribal’ zones beyond those spaces where teams can retreat to their different lines of business,” said ACDF partner Joan Renaud. “The layout provides a functional balance of flow and concentration that is conducive to the FlightHub culture.”

      A circular glass wall detailed with narrow translucent panes wraps around the common area concealing the interior from the outer spaces. Inside, a rectangular volume, reminiscent of aerospace technology, is clad with perforated aluminium foam to block ambient sounds.

      Playster Headquarters by ACDF includes brightly coloured workspaces

      To separate the spaces within the communal zone the studio has installed several fabric curtains and used vibrant wall colours and furnishings that also act as a wayfinding system.

      In the kitchen stainless steel appliances and a rounded counter are paired with a green ceiling and floor, while the lounge features red office chairs and matching walls. Blue chairs in the reception area blend with the hues used on the walls and in the game room the bright yellow paint stands out against the foosball table and other furnishings.

      On the outer ring each of the four zones is outfitted with storage, a printing room, a small kitchenette, private phone call booths and a conference room.
      Workspaces comprise clusters of eight desks arranged in two rows of four. A low-lying black screen divides the row of desks to create a privacy wall between workers.

      ADCF completed the project in April 2020 before businesses reconsidered how to layout offices to adhere to social distancing protocols as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. However, it believes the design scheme reduces contact between people.
      The circular plan forms two pathways and entrances for moving through the space and the small kitchen and meeting rooms in each “tribe” reduce the likelihood of large gatherings in the communal areas.

      ACDF is led by Canadian architects Maxime-Alexis Frappier, Joan Renaud and Étienne Laplante Courchesne.
      The studio has completed a number of office projects in Montreal, including a colourful workspace for entertainment service Playster and offices for software company Lightspeed that combines historic brickwork with pastel hues.
      Photography is by Maxime Brouillet.

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      Gonzalez Haase AAS creates minimal interior for Berlin communications office

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      Architecture studio Gonzalez Haase AAS used aluminium and translucent sheets of polycarbonate to create the few fixtures and furnishings that appear inside this sparse Berlin office.The office belongs to trendy communications agency BAM and has been designed by Gonzalez Haase AAS as a celebration of “raw materiality and geometric simplicity”.
      “The raw, minimalistic aesthetic serves as a blank canvas for the agency’s creative projects,” the studio explained.

      Measuring 270 square metres, the office takes over the ground and first floor of a building at the heart of the German capital.

      The spacious lower level has been left open so that the agency can use it for large-scale meetings, or transform into a showroom or gallery-style space for events.

      It’s only interrupted by a floor-to-ceiling sliding partition that can be pulled across to divide the space into two separate rooms when necessary.
      The partition is crafted from four sheets of polycarbonate and has intentionally been positioned to sit slightly diagonally to contrast the sharp right angles that appear elsewhere throughout the space.

      A white flight of stairs with a wire-frame balustrade leads up to the office proper.
      Raw aluminium has been used to craft a series of blocky furnishings at this level, most notably a 22.5-metre-long shelf that extends from one side of the room to the other.
      The shelf incorporates several open and closed storage cupboards, and a bench seat where staff can sit to eat their lunch.

      Aluminium has additionally been used to make the long central work desk and the cabinetry in the small kitchenette.
      Another angled polycarbonate partition appears at this level, but in this instance separates a boardroom.

      “These monumental [aluminium] elements find balance in the large, translucent walls of polycarbonate sheeting,” added the studio.

      Berlin’s Brutalist Silence office has barely anything inside

      Further textual interest is created by the chipped wood and wool acoustic panels that have been staggered across the ceiling. They’re inset with simple strip lights that illuminate work areas below.

      Gonzalez Haase AAS was established in 1999 by Pierre Jorge Gonzalez and Judith Haase.
      The studio often applies a pared-back aesthetic to its projects – last year it completed Tem-plate, a fashion concept store in Lisbon that has been simply finished with white walls, concrete floors and display fixtures clad in crinkled silver metal.

      As well as BAM’s office, other minimal workspaces in Berlin include Brutalist Silence, an office designed by Annabell Kutucu that features exclusively concrete surfaces and only a handful of furniture.
      Photography is by Thomas Meyer.

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      Brooklyn hotel bedrooms converted into offices for remote workers

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      Brooklyn’s Wythe Hotel has teamed up with workplace designer Industrious to create rentable offices in its guest suites to cater to those who are working from home during the coronavirus pandemic. With many offices still closed due to the city’s coronavirus lockdown regulations, the Industrious at Wythe Hotel project is intended to offer remote workers with access to flexible, clean and well-equipped workspaces.

      Available for rent by the day, each office is located in one of the Williamsburg hotel’s former loft-style bedrooms with access to a private outdoor space. They are designed to cater to up to four people with Wi-Fi, access to printing services and a smart TV.

      Bedroom furnishings are replaced by sit or stand wood desks and rexford chairs from furniture rental provider Feather, and black metal table lamps.
      The finishes complement the room’s industrial aesthetic of exposed concrete floors and brick walls.

      “Together with Industrious, we are offering remote workers a safe and comfortable place to be productive and escape the confinements of their apartments for a moment,” said Wythe Hotel owner Peter Lawrence.

      Offices after pandemic will “balance physical and virtual work” says Perkins and Will interior design director

      Industrious at Wythe Hotel provides an example of the way that traditional working lifestyles could be disrupted following the pandemic.
      In its earlier stages, Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft said “the great work-from-home experiment” would mean remote working would no longer be unusual.

      “The companies that best navigate the future of work are going to be the ones that put choices in their employees’ hands, including the choice of where and how they do their job best,” said Industrious co-founder Jamie Hodari.
      “At Industrious, we think this is just one example of the types of innovation you’ll begin to see in our industry and beyond.”

      Other architects and designers have similarly forecasted ways that offices will change. British interior designer Sevil Peach said they will get smaller, while Form4 Architecture co-founder Paul Fero believes that cubicles will become more prevalent.
      Perkins and Will interior design director Meena Krenek said offices will balance “physical and virtual” work and proposed physical spaces for meetings and large gatherings. Global firm Woods Bagot also created diagrams of workplaces during coronavirus that merge working from home and office.

      Wythe Hotel has made the office spaces available until 31 August. The boutique hotel provided accommodation for medical workers from Woodhull Hospital in Bushwick and NYU Langone Hospital in Sunset Park during the height of the city’s pandemic, an experience it said has enabled them to develop safe practices.
      “By working in collaboration with doctors and nurses on-property during the shutdown, our staff is well-equipped to ensure that all guests are staying in a healthy environment,” it said.

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      Cabinette co-working space in Valencia plays off Jacques Tati's film Playtime

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      The 1960s film Playtime by renowned French director Jacques Tati set the tone for this whimsical co-working office that Masquespacio has designed in Valencia.Cabinette is a co-working space for creatives set inside a mixed-use building in Valencia’s La Fuensanta neighbourhood.

      It takes over a ground-floor unit that was originally fit-out to serve as an apartment. Leaving the existing bathroom facilities in place, interiors studio Masquespacio reconfigured the rest of the floor plan to accommodate a series of work areas for Cabinette’s members.

      The studio’s founders, Christophe Penasse and Ana Milena Hernández Palacios, wanted to give the 200-square-metre space a retrofuturist aesthetic that’s attractive to millennials but also makes “a clear wink to the past”.

      A particular point of reference was Playtime – a 1967 comedy film directed by Jaques Tati that follows character Monsieur Hulot as he navigates a gadget-filled version of future Paris.
      It’s revered for its satirical take on modern life and was also included in Dezeen’s list of 10 films with amazing architecture.

      Masquespacio creates colour-clashing interior for phone-repair shop in Valencia

      “We once visited a museum installation here in Valencia where they showcased some fragments of the movie, especially a moment where the leading actor goes to a meeting,” Penasse told Dezeen.

      In the film, when Hulot arrives at the meeting, he enters a huge office where each employee’s desk is closed in by a cabinet-lined box – a feature which inspired Cabinette’s name.
      Penasse and Palacious have similarly divided desks in the co-working space, but instead of individual boxes have erected low-lying partitions.
      As with the interior of the boxes in Playtime, the desks and chairs in Cabinette are a pastel green-blue colour.

      The same colour features across the floor, as well as the counter, tiled splashback and a couple of cupboards in the kitchen, which sits in the corner of the room.
      Walls and part of the floor here are painted chocolate-brown, complementing the steel stools from Masquespacio’s Déjà-Vu collection that appear beside the counter. They each feature tiers of brown, ochre and blue fringing.
      Another wall in Cabinette is clad in mirrored panels, while one on the far side of the office is a bright lilac hue. It’s decorated with various graphic-print canvases and rows of illuminated tube lights.

      A set of stairs leads up to a mezzanine where there are a pair of intimate meeting rooms that members can use for group work or take private phone calls.
      They’re screened off by the same shiny silver curtains that hang in front of the full-height windows at ground level that look through to an outdoor terrace.

      There is also a more formal boardroom that features deep-purple surfaces. The central lacquered-wood table is surrounded by Masquespacio’s gold-framed Arco chairs, which are upholstered in burnt-orange velvet.
      The studio’s eye-shaped Wink lights are also mounted on the wall.

      Masquespacio was established in 2010 by Penasse and Ana Milena Hernández Palacios. The studio has applied its colourful aesthetic to a number of projects.
      These include a phone repair shop that features a clashing mix of salmon-pink and turquoise surfaces, and a tropical green and maroon restaurant that offers Brazilian-Japanese cuisine.
      Photography is by Luis Beltran.

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      Xiaoxi Xiong designs greyscale interiors for Fnji office in Beijing

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      The “warm sense of the future” depicted in sci-fi movie Her informed the soft grey workspaces that designer Xiaoxi Xiong has created in the Beijing office of furniture brand Fnji.The 1000-square-metre Fnji office is located northeast of central Beijing in the city’s Shunyi district.
      Chinese designer Xiaoxi Xiong was tasked with developing a striking aesthetic for the new office.

      “As the urban planning policy is tightened in Beijing, the resource of distinctive office space is rare now,” explained Xiaoxi Xiong, who leads Tra & Xi Studio alongside designer Lin Yitong. “After long term research, we chose this space in the end.”

      “Its attractive spatial advantages are the top-floor views, daylight, and the two floors which could be constructed freely.”

      Xiong wanted to imbue the office with the same “blurry and warm sense of the future” they saw in the 2013 sci-fi romance film Her, which chronicles how a shy writer gradually falls in love with an artificial intelligence system.

      Precht creates monochromatic interiors for RayData office in Beijing

      Almost every surface in the office – including the floors – has been washed with pale-grey gypsum plaster, selected for its ultra-matte surface finish.

      The plaster has also been made to cover the balustrade and treads of the curving staircase that leads up to the office’s upper level.
      Towards the back of the lower level are a couple of textural feature walls, which Xiong created by pouring semi-solidified gypsum over jumbled piles of broken bricks.

      “It’s such an interesting process to recreate an installation with recycled materials,” Xiong told Dezeen.
      “This work has a new life and exists in the space naturally.”
      Furnishings throughout the office, from the work desks to the cushioned chairs in the glass-fronted meeting rooms, are also grey.

      Two huge slate-coloured planters are installed on the lower level, and a sheer dark-grey curtain extends down from the office’s ceiling to the lower level.
      Sections of the floor are also covered by striped or checkerboard-pattern grey carpet.

      Translucent paper-like blinds hang in front of the windows to lend a soft and hazy light quality to the office interior.
      Some dark-coloured elements, like the rough black stone counter that sits towards Fnji office’s entrance, have been incorporated to “strike out the softness”.

      Much like Xiaoxi Xiong, architecture practice Precht referenced the film Her for its design of a data office in Chaoyang, Beijing.
      The floor, desks and work booths in the office are upholstered in soft grey fabric, which the practice hoped would emulate the way the film “connects technology with a very warm and tactile atmosphere”.
      Dezeen also included Her in its roundup of 10 films with striking interior design to watch under lockdown.
      Photography is by Mobai except for head image by Yu Ling.
      Project credits:
      Lead designer: Xiaoxi XiongArt director: Guqi GaoDetailed design: Juan LiSoft loading design: Yu LiEngineering manager: Mingyu ZhangEngineering execution: Jiahuan Liu

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      Siren Design creates “environments where people can thrive”

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      VDF studio profile: Siren is a sustainability-focused, women-led design studio that has crafted interiors for businesses from tech companies like Google and Facebook to a philanthropic organisation. The company was founded by CEO Mia Feasey in 2005 and has since expanded to include 75 employees across its original Sydney studio as well as locations in […] More

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      Offices after pandemic will “balance physical and virtual work” says Perkins and Will interior design director

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      Offices after coronavirus should be designed for meetings and socialising while focused work should take place at home, says Perkins and Will interior design director Meena Krenek, who has developed proposals to rethink the purpose of the workplace. Krenek, who is based in the architecture firm’s Los Angeles office, led a team to create the […] More

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      Studio Edwards arranges yellow steel beams to form modular work pods

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      Studio Edwards has created a series of modular yellow-framed work pods to turn a vacant warehouse space in Melbourne into an office. The pods by Studio Edwards are designed to accommodate groups of up to four members of staff and are constructed from bright-yellow steel beams. These beams can be bolted together and taken apart […] More