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Commercial Offices
Houston, U.S.A.

program Office planning and interior design for 320 people + meeting facilities and a small auditorium

size 6000 sqm (1500 sqm x 4 floors) + 500 sqm (meeting facilities)

status completed 2007

Offices planning:

Spaces dimensions, finishing materials, void spaces, type of furniture: all cooperate to create an island of calm and concentration in the very heart of the metropolis and at the crossroad of jammed highways.
We were very interested in exasperating the contrast between outdoor and indoor.

Meeting facilities:

The client had an impressive personnel growth of his Houston office and needed to house facilities in the basement where some space to let was available.
The problem was to avoid the sensation to enter an atomic bunker and we tried to make it by breaking visually the constraints that are generally given by ceiling, perimeter walls and inners walls.
Profiting of the zones in which the technical plants don’t entirely fill up the airspace between false and structural ceiling, we managed to design the false ceiling with deep holes with strong light inside like fake skylights.
We operated on the perimeter walls mounting an uninterrupted series of full height prints of industrial landscapes that lessen the sensation of dead end perspectives.
Inner walls, instead of defining regular corridors, give shape to rather “sculptural” shapes that house a small auditorium for 100p, a horse-shoe classroom for 60p, all glass meeting rooms for 30p.
The corridors irregular enlargements house, like an Italian “strada” or “largo” would do, a diffused cafeteria.

Commercial Offices
Houston, U.S.A.

program Office planning and interior design for 320 people + meeting facilities and a small auditorium

size 6000 sqm (1500 sqm x 4 floors) + 500 sqm (meeting facilities)

status completed 2007

Offices planning:

Spaces dimensions, finishing materials, void spaces, type of furniture: all cooperate to create an island of calm and concentration in the very heart of the metropolis and at the crossroad of jammed highways.
We were very interested in exasperating the contrast between outdoor and indoor.

Meeting facilities:

The client had an impressive personnel growth of his Houston office and needed to house facilities in the basement where some space to let was available.
The problem was to avoid the sensation to enter an atomic bunker and we tried to make it by breaking visually the constraints that are generally given by ceiling, perimeter walls and inners walls.
Profiting of the zones in which the technical plants don’t entirely fill up the airspace between false and structural ceiling, we managed to design the false ceiling with deep holes with strong light inside like fake skylights.
We operated on the perimeter walls mounting an uninterrupted series of full height prints of industrial landscapes that lessen the sensation of dead end perspectives.
Inner walls, instead of defining regular corridors, give shape to rather “sculptural” shapes that house a small auditorium for 100p, a horse-shoe classroom for 60p, all glass meeting rooms for 30p.
The corridors irregular enlargements house, like an Italian “strada” or “largo” would do, a diffused cafeteria.