The project for the GFT Italia Headquarter in Milan by DAP Studio wants to shape a paradox: to design an office for a company who works with the immaterial world of Information Technology, taking inspiration from the greatest material invention of man, the city.
Instead of excluding urban life from the workplace, the interior design transform it into the very paradigm of work experience.
“We designed a working place where human relations and knowledge can move along ‘streets’ and ‘squares’, where people can discuss in cozy lounges or share opinions in front of a long dining table. Thus the open space of an ordinary office building becomes a new urban landscape, the theatre of a new way of understanding work”. explain Elena Sacco and Paolo Danelli of DAP Studio.
To reflect the non-hierarchical company, the space organization is fluid and facilitates interpersonal relationships and exchange of information.
The entrance to the office is designed as a threshold area between the “outside world” and the inner new office. Beyond the threshold, an elongated architectural volume, with its highly recognizable shape.
This iconic element is the fulcrum and the common background for spaces and paths and has a double value.
Its cross-section, with its sloping roof, refers to the archetypal shape of the house and emphasizes an idea of office that hybridizes with the domestic space: an informal place where people use to meet and share their ideas.
Its longitudinal flow refers to the standard image of the factory, too; with bright and warm color inside and a reflecting metal-like surface that captures the light. The exterior, instead, has a white perforated cladding, a mutable surface thanks to the effect of the filtering inner light and colour.
This dialectic between material perception and evanescence of shapes is a key to interpreting the project and we can find it also in the contrast between concrete walls and wide glass surfaces, minimal white furniture and strong wooden window frames.
Photo by Barbara Corsico
