If your idea of a law firm equates to dark wood paneling and velvet chairs, BHDM Design’s interior for Axiom Law will flip that antiquated idea on its head. Axiom is a tradition-defying law firm whose motto is “law redefined”. Based in New York City, the firm needed offices to reflect their particular ideals. Enter BDHM. The local design studio transformed a loft space i...
Designed by Chinese architects Archi-Union Architects, Tea House is a study in limitations. Three walls hem the lot, creating physical and spatial limitations, and the technologically advanced design was met with the limitations of low-technology construction. Yet, despite the obstacles, the architects created a distinctive and relaxing space in the backyard of their off...
Simply put, the office breathes. Slipped quietly under the trees, employees work alongside sunlight, raindrops, falling leaves…the structure is made to let workers take full advantage of nature’s changing face. The northern side of the building’s transparent plexiglas® gives the impression of ‘working under the treetops’ and bathes the workspace in natural light, while t...
For New York City’s NeueHouse, David Rockwell, founder and president of Rockwell Group , wanted to design a new kind of collective office for small organizations and entrepreneurs. What he created is a creative community space for working, meeting and mingling that draws professionals from the worlds of art, design, fashion, cinema and more. NeueHouse functions with ...
Designed by ABA Studio, Pandora’s New York offices are located on the 19th and 20th floors of a Midtown Manhattan office building. From a low entrance space on the 19th floor, the office opens up to a double-height central space with a grand staircase that connects the two floors. The space is bordered by a wall of translucent disks connected by aluminum hooks and backed...
Apparently, the Netherlands is the place to work. Last week it was the renovated De Burgemeester office, and this week, we’re ogling the Amsterdam headquarters of Nuon. Located in the newly transformed NieuwAmsterdam building, the BREEAM-certified, six-storey office space was designed by Heyligers Design + Projects to accommodate 2,200 employees. Sustainability was at th...
International architecture firm Woods Bagot designed National Australia Bank‘s new headquarters in Melbourne. As part of the new structure, an innovative approach to customer service was created. The Village Customer Innovation Center is an interactive and informal space where NAB’s community and customers can connect, collaborate and share ideas. Meant to be dynamic ...
Palæo, a fast food chain in Copenhagen that serves healthy food with fresh, unprocessed ingredients, has a new design created by Johannes Torpe Studios. Inspired by the simplicity of the paleo diet and lifestyle, the space’s design used raw materials such as leather, wood, stone, brass and wool, which provide a sense of hygge – a Danish word referring to coziness establi...
HLM, a multidisciplinary design and architecture firm, has renovated the interior of a North London building for ScreenWorks, an office that provides space for budding entrepreneurs and new business launches. Originally used to manufacture some of the earliest radios and televisions, the building’s industrial heritage was worked into the new design with vintage televisio...
We might have found the coolest radio station building ever. Seoul-based architect Kim In-cheurl of Archium was asked to design the building that hosts the Mustang Broadcasting Community (MBC), a radio station located in northwestern Nepal! That’s right, folks, we’re talking about a radio station located 3000 meters above the sea level in a region of harsh weather condit...
Treehotel by Tham & Videgard Arkiyekter is the grown up version of your favorite youth hideaway. Built on live trees in the forests of northern Sweden, the aluminum structure’s mirrored glass exterior reflects nature’s fluidly changing face while affording visitors a fresh glimpse of the landscape. Equally conscious of the environment, the Treehotel is designed to respec...
Melinda Delst Interior Design created a 1300 sqm space this year to serve as head office for Fairphone, a socially conscious smartphone manufacturer who puts sustainability first. Located in Amsterdam in an old warehouse built in 1884, the office has a great view on both the river IJ and the city. The company’s needs called for an open, transparent headquarters that woul...
Ekimetrics is a young, dynamic firm that specializes in marketing and big data. For their new headquarters located on the Champs Elysées in Paris, the company sought an office space that would reflect their culture and identity. Paris-based architect Estelle Vincent introduced modern, minimal structures as a contrast to the well-preserved 19th century space. Indeed, t...
You might think of a hotel as a place to rest or a home-away-from-home. However, fans of the traditional hotel might be baffled by Edmund, this unique room conceived by Dutch designers Jos Blom and Jasper Eustace at the Volkshotel in Amsterdam. In fact, the hotel is far from conventional – no cookie-cutter rooms here! In fact, Edmund is part of a series of rooms, each of...
Gourmet chefs are increasingly turning to more plebeian endeavors. Perhaps these white-coated soldiers, decorated in Michelin stars, are trying to reinvent the wheel – or perhaps they just appreciate the tastiness of simple fare. Whatever the reason may be, it’s working out wonderfully for everyone involved: customers get a gourmet upgrade on traditional food and chefs ...
Matera, Italy, also known as la Città Sotteranea (the Subterranean City), is one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world. Originating from a crop of troglodyte homes nestled in the hillside, Matera’s historical center (the Sassi) was classified as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993. In the heart of the Sassi, Italian architect Domenico Fiore renovated twelve of ...
Anyone who has every worked in a call center will probably confirm that it is a job often fraught with stress and frustration. It is also not a job that is known for its flexibility, however Airbnb’s new Portland headquarters might change the face of customer service. The Portland office is the first of the company’s new Customer Experience (CX) centers that will soon...
In our recent e-magazine, we discuss the trend of home-away-from-home accommodations, and the leader in the trend is definitively Airbnb. Recently, Irish architecture firm Heneghan Peng has finished Airbnb’s Dublin offices in Seán Reilly’s Watermarque building. The two-storey office encompasses almost 2,000 square meters and is meant to create an open and collaborative o...
Located in Thailand’s former capital of Ayutthaya, the Sala Ayutthaya is a twenty-six room boutique hotel near the Chao Phraya River. Designed by Bangkok-based architects Onion, the hotel is divided by a long corridor of locally handcrafted brick. The gently curved geometry offers visitors seclusion and privacy. The hotel is divided into twelve individual “homes” within ...
To create a showroom that matched the elegant collection of Danish design brand &tradition, Norm Architects took a step outside of the box (pun intended). Rather than a standard space, the architects turned the interior of a vast warehouse in central Copenhagen into a small village of sparse, white buildings, most of which are flexible, multipurpose spaces that will be u...
We do appreciate a good urban boutique hotel, we also appreciate one of Toronto’s signature boutique hotels, The Drake, bringing its artsy touch to the countryside. The Devonshire Inn is located right on the shore of Lake Ontario in the scenic and rural Prince Edward County, a region known for its beaches, wineries and active cultural scene. Providing the perfect site an...
We love coffee! Yes, we do! We love coffee! How ’bout you? We’re positive that the coffee experts at Single Origin Roasters in Sydney, Australia, feel the same. And judging by their excellent design execution, we suspect that Stuart Krelle and Rachel Luchetti of Australian firm Luchetti Krelle might feel the same. They gave a boost to the local coffee shop using susta...
Though we are not personally brandy devotees, we would dip our palate into the world of strong spirits just to spend some time in the Shustov Brandy Bar. Located in Odessa, Ukraine, the bar was designed by Denis Belenko Design Band, a local architecture firm that incidentally also has a pretty amazing name. The walls of the establishment are made from barrels, while t...
French designer Patrick Norguet is the design force behind the OKKO HOTELS. Implanted in the very heart of cities, OKKO is an entirely urban concept that attempts to deliver the best of local life to visitors. Architecture that reflects the location and carefully curated regional restaurants help non-locals immerse themselves in their environment. Most recently, OKKO ha...
25 square meters doesn’t seem to be big enough for a sit-down cafe. One thing is for sure : to do that, you’d have to use space in a clever way. This is how it was done for the Flipboard Cafe. The first thing was to use the vertical volume of the tiny space by implementing a multi-level organisation. Small spaces found during the renovation of the front facade are used a...
Chilean architect Felipe Assadi, whose modular housing concept we presented earlier this summer, has carved a painter’s studio into the rugged coastline near Los Vilos, Chile. The studio is an extension of the architect’s “Bahia Azul” home and borrows the home’s raw concrete to create a respite from the outside world. Straight and narrow, the studio’s rigid horizontal an...
The Karlín district of Prague has a very rich industrial history that has since been left aside. When the architects at Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura received a renovation project in this former industrial center, they were determined to respect the building’s past with a design that enhanced its unique features. Originally a boiler factory, the building was n...
Perhaps the most ubiquitous brand on the planet, Coca-Cola, has a new place to call home in its relocated and freshly refurbished London headquarters. Architectural design practice MoreySmith reimagined the four-story space, refitting a 6,000 square feet building originally designed in 1912. The project includes a rooftop terrace, cafe, meeting room, open plan office and...
Cafe Mojo is a coffee house located in Astana, Kazakhstan, and designed by Nurlan Kamitov of Kamitov Project Architecture. It is part of a bigger restaurant complex, therefore the architects had the task of integrating it into the existing decor, while still cultivating a distinct environment for the cafe. Inviting leather chairs and shelves populated with books and knic...
London-based advertising agency Analog Folk sought out the talent of Design Haus Liberty for their office transformation. Headed by Dara Huang, the young architecture firm immediately set about creating a lofted, industrial work space for the East London agency. The addition of a new mezzanine and staircase spatially optimized the almost 1000 square meter office, while i...
Something about a giant pile of perfectly stacked, breakable objects brings out the primordial desire to smash. Or to dive headfirst and go for a swim, which means that patrons of the newly renovated Maruhiro Flagship Store may have to practice some superhuman self control when confronted with this installation by Japanese designer Yusuke Seki. Located in Nagaski, Japan,...
South Korea’s Snow Hotel throws design caution to the window. Patterns and materials are recklessly mixed in a glorious clash of marble, tile, wood and wallpaper. Marble floors run smack into cubic optical illusions and rustic stone fades into pristine white tile. Fake meets real, contemporary blends into ancient. Designed by 1990uao, the hotel is located in downtown ...
Those of you that are suckers for a good concept store are going to love Le White Concept Store in Paris. As its name implies, Le White exclusively sells artwork and design objects that are white. The concept also extends to the shop’s walls, floors, shelves and furniture, cultivating a dazzlingly surreal ambiance. Each piece of the collection is scrupulously curated by ...
In a country where design culture tends to be concentrated in Paris, Margaux Keller Design Studio is a breath of fresh air. Unlike her fellow graduates of Ecole Boulle, the young designer chose to set up camp in Marseille. Recently, she teamed up with Bertrand Guillon Architecture to design the Le Coiffeur hair salon in Marseille’s newly renovated docks. Owned by loca...
Mark Dziewulski designed a flexible and peaceful multipurpose living space that serves as an art gallery, an office and a generously proportioned entertainment space. The most defining trait is perhaps the overhanging roof that gently slopes up, revealing a floor-to-ceiling window that generously bathes the living space in light. This open space, despite its very modern ...
Generally speaking, a butcher shop is rarely a haven of modernity. But things are changing. When a family butcher shop in Ceràs, Spain, passed to the next generation, the sons decided to give it a visual update with the help of architecture firm Pau Sarquella Fàbregas. Starting from the inside out, the family began an excavation of the building by revealing hidden flo...
