Storytelling in interior design!

By Savitha Hira

Photography: Prashant Bhat; courtesy Beyond Design Architects

Read Time: 2 mins 

reception with signage in LED-lit hand-written font

Alhad Gore of Beyond Design Architects takes to the art of storytelling with this cutting-edge interior design for technology services provider - Globant.

Designing for a company that provides break-through customer experiences can be a challenge and one that Beyond Design Architects were quick to respond to with their interactive interiors for Globant’s colossal 75000 sq. ft. office space in Pune, India.

 

open-plan

boxed spaces

Sensitive to the collaborative processes of working, whilst preserving privacy and the crucial independent role-play of the employees, the largely open-plan work spaces are contrived as individual pockets of narration.

 

simulating nature with 'a walk in the woods'

interview room

interview room

So the 40,000 sq. ft. each of the two-level program houses 600 numbers of 120⁰ workstations in a broad classification of four quadrants – each quadrant with a distinctive set of meeting rooms, collaborative spaces, phone booths and designated fire exits that are iterative of an environment of camaraderie and interactivity.

 

meeting rooms

Geometry plays the field here as no one space is similar to the next: whilst the   lounge-like reception is elliptical, meeting rooms come in box or bean-shaped avatars; with the principle of dissimilarity extending to the division of spaces and furniture as well.

 

boardroom

cafeteria

Upholstered and soft, stark and almost neutral, bar-stool ambience, school-bench appeal, street-side phone-booth privacy, rustic metal enclosure ambience, fine-dine finery, casual conversation charisma… each space confronts a different scenario building its own narrative at the individual employee psyche.

 

phone booth

recreation corner

'no ceiling'

Added to this, a few elements are handled exceptionally, viz. the ceiling: touted by the architect as the ‘no-ceiling’ concept, has a pipe rail as a deconstructivist element, becoming the path-guiding tool and doubling up to hang swings, acoustical panels, bus handles, space dividers… The ‘learning tree’ scenario, where an FRP tree is acclimatized with acoustical panels and light fittings complete with acrylic origami birds hanging from the ceiling, for the ideal ideating hub;  the ingeniously designed writable areas on existing columns clad with writable film or even meeting room surfaces finished with black painted glass; the challenge of acoustical phone booths ideal for one-two members equipped with technological paraphernalia and adequate air-flow complete, and the like… keep the environment dynamic and constantly evolving.

 

HR enclosure

But the idea that walks away with the laurels in this new-age working environment is the positioning of the HR department with its individualistic interview rooms – right in the centre of the office, giving the aspiring employee a whiff of the cultural ethos of the organisation.

 

amphitheatre

inside meeting rooms

With colour and form as the mainstay of this artistic conglomeration, the architect blurs the boundaries between physicality and emotional response.