
“Turning a sad, empty property into an inviting, creative campus presented a huge challenge, overcome thanks to the vision and determination of everyone involved”. The architect Jacopo della Fontana’s words summarize the project of the Publicis Group’s Creative Campus in Milan: a place designed for all the workers’ well being, an office that “people have no desire to leave, simply because they feel good”.
A garden, a playing field, a vegetable garden, a kindergarten, a restaurant, a gym, a bar and a cinema: “It sounds like the description of a holiday resort, but it’s actually an office, where bedrooms are replaced with flexible workstations with a new, colourful, modern appearance.” Publicis Group and Jacopo della Fontana (D2U) focused the project of the Creative Campus of Jenner st. 19 in Milan, on the main garden, designed by HW Style, the centre of the social life and interaction for the over 700 people that live in the building everyday. A space where the workers of the different companies, Leo Burnett, Saatchi & Saatchi and Publicis meet and enjoy the areas for breaks or informal meetings, the basketball/futsal court, the vegetable garden, or gym.
Although exchange and interconnection are the core of the project, the companies have their own distinct working environment, with three different doorways, equally visible on the facade where screen-printed, coloured film was applied, which creates a highly colourful, dynamic effect.
Also the ground floor is dedicated to areas serving all the agencies, with a cafeteria and a large theatre with 100 seats, numerous meeting rooms of different sizes and a crèche.
An uniform approach has been used also for the upper floors, where the different offices follow the same design, marked by some variants in terms of style: modular desks, perpendicular to the windows, occupy the open space , shielded from the corridor by 1.80 m partitions, in different colours and shapes according to the company they belong to.
The interior has been enriched with designed furniture from different brands as the dealer Cardex, and the top level suppliers; among them: Caimi Brevetti (Snowbound sound absorbing panels), dieffebi (storage), Interface (floor covering), Universal Selecta (partition walls).
Text by Gabriele Masi.