Fedor Rashchevskiy
Elena Titova
Alexey Kulagin
Design: March 2019 - May 2019
Construction:: July 2019 - September 2019
Total Area: 310 sq. m.
Photo: Sergey Volokitin
Booking.com in Novosibirsk: a trip with Street Art, or the real spirit of the city in an informal office
Traveling as a lifestyle is already a familiar meaning. But a journey through the art of urban street art - such a few can imagine. Booking.com’s office in Novosibirsk is a reflection of the new city and its modern values in every day of life.
The office for Booking.com in Novosibirsk is one of the many regional customer support centers around the world, which is located as close as possible to the popular resort areas - Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam and other countries.
“This is not the first time we have been working with Booking.com, but we participated in the tender on a common basis. We were very interested in the idea of local in the global, which, as the main task, is set in all the created offices of the company in the world. Here it was necessary to create an informal vibrant spirit, a cool atmosphere of cooperation and partnership. Therefore, we began to dig: what is there, what is Novosibirsk proud of right now, of course, except for the Opera and Ballet Theater and the Academgorodok. It turned out that Novosibirsk is the capital of Russian street art. The idea came from this: we decided to make the design ideas of local Siberian artists the basis,” says Fedor Raschevsky, the chief architect and partner of OFFCON, about the project.
An office of 300 m2 is located in the Double Hill business center in the very center of Novosibirsk. The OFFCON architects were tasked with transforming the polygon, which was the future office space, into a space with a rational layout. Only after this task was completed did work on design and creating the mood of the office begin.
Functionally, architects divided the entire area of the future office into two zones - guest and office. At the same time, in the office area, in addition to workplaces and a spacious kitchen, there are small concentration rooms.
“The zones are visually separated from each other: we set up a translucent partition between them, filled with different glass, as if assembled from different parts, which for us was very cool made by local manufacturers. This emphasized the unity of space and at the same time delimited it, ”explains Elena Titova, project architect.
As a result of a successful layout, the office became like a pleasant lounge or coworking with a sense of comfort and attractiveness - you want to stay longer in it. “We used metal in decorative partitions and suspended structures for greenery in meeting rooms, furniture solutions, remained with KS BURO. Japanese TOLI flooring was used in the working area, and Milliken in the concentration rooms, LVT Vertigo tiles were harder in the entrance area and plants were picked up for a very long time using Florista. All this, combined with colors, light and real street art, has filled the office with life, ”explains Fedor Raschevsky.
An unusual solution, consistent with the new spirit of the office, was worked out in the lighting. The main light in the working areas was designed by OFFCON based on the Russian manufacturer's Selecta system. At the factory, all the lighting fixtures and tracks were painted in the desired color and already in place they were assembled into a single body - a U-shaped box. A complete lighting system includes spotlights for accent lighting, and linear lighting for workstations.
“We specially selected the coolest lamps at a flea market where industrial lamps of the 60-80s are sold. The contractor restored them, replaced the wiring and turned out to be excellent accent items in the interior, ”the architects add.
The color scheme of Booking.com office can be called cheerful, but with the addition of corporate blue: the walls are decorated with the works of the artist Natalia Pastukhova. The color palette was built precisely around these works, taking into account the corporate blue tint, and then other colors were selected.
It is graffiti that creates a feeling of freedom, life and good friendly relaxation especially for the Booking.com office created by Natalia Pastukhova. The main image is a blue fox, which the artist reproduced from her sketches made earlier for the graffiti festival in the Novosibirsk Academgorodok.
“Working on this project was easy. Everything worked out very quickly. In fact, immediately an excellent relationship was built in a team with CBRE and the customer. We were literally on the same wavelength. Everyone liked to work, it was felt, I wanted to achieve a result that not only satisfies, but also pleases and inspires. It worked out. Everything is implemented harmoniously, and the ideas are implemented to the smallest detail,” OFFCON architects say about the completed project.