#HTE

Goroka, an audiovisual creative producer, have opened their headquarters in the Poblenou district of Barcelona. They wanted their new HQ to be a place you wanted to come to work. But what they really wanted was a unique space, a space that stepped outside the boundaries of traditional, corporate, office design. A space that felt more like a study than a humdrum office. Fortunately they had the exceptional skills of Barcelona based architectural practice Isern Serra to lean on.

What Isern Serra have managed to create is an office that reads like a Scandinavian showroom or gallery. The 350sqm space is located on the ground floor of an old industrial building. But it needed some tweaking. First they decided no ceiling, then they decided no partitions and as if there was anything else left, they decided no doors. What they wanted to achieve was a space without walls or doors or large, glass office enclosures. Elements that frankly, we are all familiar with in conventional office design.

By removing all of the visual impediments, the architects have emphasised the industrial nature of the space but they’ve kept it light and inviting by painting the job lot pure white. The existing timber floor was polished up and given a layer of extra matt lacquer to give it a warmth whilst still retaining the building’s history.

The wow factor is a single element structure that projects into space. A large, white, architectural cube that houses the meeting room. It’s the only closed space in the great hall, which deftly separates the work area from the management area. This clever, double-sided cube visually links the two spaces so that everyone feels connected at all times. The interior of the cube is panelled with plywood, whimsically making it feel somewhat like a tree house, inserted as it is into one of the structural columns in the space.

The furniture was all designed specifically for the space. It’s made from plywood and white steel framing. It’s simple, it’s clean, it’s fresh, it’s Scandi to the enth degree.

The fit out feels open, transparent. It is airy, light and strikingly simple in its design. But moreover, in our world of office design where collaboration is key, where the chance, random encounters between colleagues encourage dialogue across departments, a transparent and visually accessible work space is not only an aesthetic quality, it is rapidly becoming a pragmatic, cultural one too.

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[Images courtesy of Isern Serra. Photography by José Hevia.]

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