“The street art with its direct techniques and its suffering soul enters the offices to give a new values and new insights to the space”. With these words Alide Forte Catella, Coima Image’s managing director, explains one of the most interesting trend in fact of working environment, a symptom of a new point of view.
“The decoration in residential and offices projects is becoming a more and more important
element: it defines the style and characterizes the whole environment”, Alide Forte Catella continues. “When you look for and select the street art, you need a profound thought that has to be transmitted, in order to make the project warm, welcoming and with a story that makes it already unique”.The last projects by Coima Image, the hall of the Google-Pandora’s building and the Roland Berger offices, tell a lot about the new ways of personalizing the space.Graffiti, that are usually painted in public places to give a voice to a protest or to social criticism, develop in a new form of art with a legal and shared expression. A new language capable to give a cultural and artistic soul to living spaces.
Wow! has already talked about other examples of how graffiti can really fit with workplaces and most of all with in-between spaces, as it is shown in the new Neomobile’s headquarters in Rome.
“Street art as well as the the new visual contemporary art is integrating very well with the new modern office concepts that, through designing of different spaces, aim to stimulate social interaction among colleagues and creativity ”, Salvatore Marinaro by Unispace, who designed the project, says. “I appreciate this way of approaching the interiors, but not in the operative areas, where, in my opinion, the focus has to be pointed on the work station, with the right choice of lights, colors and materials”.
As also Monforte‘s headquarters and the cultural platform #UfficioManifesto show, the growing presence of graffiti in the working enviroment can be considered a part of the new ways of working, aiming to create a collaborative, fun, and home feeling workplace, more informal and relaxed.
Testo di Gabriele Masi.
Captions
1, Hall Google – Pandora. Coima image. Coima Image took care of the main lobby’s interior design, in the building projected by W. Mc Donough in the new Milan’s Isola quarter. Four street artists have been working for four evenings, using the spray techniques, interpreting some suggestions as the green and the nature (since the proximity of the world famous Bosco Verticale), the abstraction and the representation of the letters G and P (Google and Pandora). The milanese street artist are Marte, Fosk, Mate and Leos. The first three are part of the “Nuclear1” , a crew borned in Milano in 1996 and composed by artists with different backgrounds and styles.
2,3,4 Roland Berger’s offices, Coima Image. The Roland Berger’s offices are hosted in the building “Gioiaotto”, designed in the 70s by Marco Zanuso and recently restructured in the Porta Nuova Varesine project.
Coima Image has rethought the 600 sqm workplace, aiming to optimize the space. The double or multiple manager’s offices are separated by walls and decorated by graffiti inspired by the principles of the world famous “Singularity University” in California: using the new technologies to face the great contemporary challenges. That is why every office is characterize by different images of DNA, energy, robotics and nanotechnologies.
The street artists are the same: Marte, Fosk, Mate and Leos.
5, 6 Monforte’s headquarters in Milano. Monforte. The space designed by Monforte and its business developer Paola Miglio, is a “coworking of spaces and ideas”, the manifesto of the collaborative office. The areas of this colourful work environment recall models of different ways of more relaxed team working (eat and chat, meet, welcome).
“We want to take the experience we made in domestic spaces in the working environment, to build workplace for the individual and common well being, in which intellect’s efficiency and the emotional intuitions can easily work together”, Daniele Lago, by the Lago company, that supplies the furnitures, says.
7, 8 Neomobile’s office, Unispace. “The choice of the graffiti is linked to the old campaign “become a superhero of mobile monetization” that Neomobile was running when we designed the new spaces”, Salvatore Marinaro said. “The corporate communication manager wanted for the in-between and break areas, images of famous superheroes in unusual poses, such as a sleeping Superman or Hulk coming out of the shower”. In Neomobile’s offices there aren’t any graffiti in the operative spaces, where they preferred to keep neutral walls in order to facilitate the concentration.
