BMW Bank Italia and Alphabet Italia commissioned GBPA ARCHITECTS to renovate 4,000 square metres of office space on the sixth to ninth floors of the Beta Tower at their headquarters in San Donato Milanese.
The project was coordinated by Federica De Leva, partner of GBPA ARCHITECTS, and Cristiana Cutrona, founder of REVALUE, a company specialising in Workplace Strategy and workplace design.
The result is the bespoke design of four floors of offices, united by a strong identity image linked to the world of BMW, to clearly identify the two companies in the group but also to best respond to their different ways of working.
The fulcrum of the project, on all floors, is a central island – the “Central Spine” – which provides all the supports of different sizes, shapes and types for the work activity, functional to the need for exchange of ideas and contamination of employees: closed and glazed offices designed specifically for meetings, which can also be used as spaces for concentration, formal and informal collaboration areas that are open but can be screened by soundproof curtains.
In the open space, individual workstations alternate with circular tables for collaborative work, specially produced to the designers’ design.
All the workstations are height-adjustable to encourage variable posture, a sign of the BMW Group’s great attention and care for people’s well-being, another key element of the project.
The GBPA ARCHITECTS and REVALUE team took care of every detail, starting with the graphic element that characterises the environments and is the “Fil Rouge” of the project, transversal to all 4 floors: a mirrored and replicated triangle, which composes an original decorative pattern and perfectly reflects the details of BMW Group products.
If on the one hand, through the spatial organisation and the elements characterising the layout, the aim of the project was to unite the 4 floors in such a way as to identify the two companies as belonging to the same family, on the other hand the differences in colour and in the palette of finishes and small architectural variations give each level its own recognisability.
For more information visit www.gbpaarchitects.com.
CREDITS
PROJECT: New offices of BMW Bank Italia and Alphabet Italia
DESIGN: GBPA Architects, Revalue
LOCATION: Milan
YEAR: 2021
PHOTOS: Barbara Corsico
