The workspace layout mimics this urban context, with meeting rooms and cubicles conceived as individual buildings connected by street-like passages with breakaway cafes and collaboration zones accessed through an open tiered forum staged as a park with large planters and floor to ceiling views past the solid wooden beams styled as tree trunks to the street outside. Neighborhoods are created for different work style needs from informal collaboration, to focused work and large group sessions by playfully theming each space with detailing and references to the function of the space and how it might be represented in a cityscape.

Meeting rooms have windows which allow increased access to light and frame individually styled interiors in a tapestry of views that references building facades and the glimpses through windows into the varied occupiers of a building. This design detailing is underpinned by the insight that flexibility and accommodating many different types of workstyles is key to engaging teams and creating a rewarding workspace. By echoing the flow and layers of a city and encouraging the spontaneous interactions that enable innovation and connection while providing quiet spots for individuals to withdraw and focus, the office layout meets the needs of different generations and individual neurodiverse requirements.

Designing for high performance user-comfort in an increasingly digital workspace is taken further by using the organic curves created by the building styled meeting rooms and passageways and reconfiguring conventional notions of meeting spaces. Placing the screen as a central player within a tiered forum-type setting creates more efficient and purposeful design for combined in-person and virtual meetings which are predominant in global communications and hybrid work models. Embracing circular design and the ever-evolving nature of cities the design purposefully re uses and upcycles 80% of materials and furniture from the company’s previous offices.

Materials from each stage of the fit-out were designed into the next iteration of the office. Carpeting was repurposed as an acoustic and textural finish to the central reception wall in vertical pattern referencing a building façade. Interiors of shelving and cupboards have insets from old shelving with bright explosions of pattern and colour as one might find down a corner side street, and old chairs had their legs removed and were repainted as backrest seating in the open park-like forum. The final result of the two floor office glows from the inside with warm timber, colourful detailing and inviting seating along with pockets of café style interaction spaces visible to the passers-by at street level.

It projects a compelling view of what a successful workspace of the future looks like while embodying the company’s core values of sustainability and innovation in the JLL Belux and Tetris Design and Build Head Office.