Frédéric Fourrichon Architecture under Alejandra Albarran’s art direction designed AIRHELP Berlin Headquarters converting a former industrial building in Friedrichshain central district into a flexible working space where the lines between work, life and community are blurring.

-text by the authors

As fast growing start-up, AirHelp relocated its Headquarter into the former Carpenter Factory building in the scene district of Berlin-Friedrichshain. The client requested a space where people could meet, feel comfortable and work. A flexible working space where the distance between people can be modulated in order to respond to the multitude of uses: working area, concentrating, meetings, coffee breaks, lunches and parties.

The lines between work, life, and community are blurring, and the office should be designed to reflect these new realities.

People are most productive when they are healthy, inspired, motivated, and valued, but not when they are stressed. The modern workplace is all about the employee experience. The workplace provided unassigned seating combined with a multitude of different environments for every need and personality. Architects designed an environment for the employees to work alone, then together and provide a variety of experiences with the intention to improve their life at work. The space has been divided in 2 distinct areas which define social and focus. Social is where all collaborations and interactions take place. Focus is a (cloistered) cocoon area where employees work alone.

The building layout has a T-Shape and deep rooms, so we took advantage of the double exposition site to leave the light penetrate until the middle area. Two large meeting room are separating the socialisation area from the focus room, in which the wood and plants jungle are creating a small oasis of peace. The quiet area of the “office” has a home like environment and is a tranquil zone designed to invite individual flow and focus. More personal, it is favorable for concentration and achievement, wood flooring, soft fabric, plants and lot of lights complete and gives a sensation of isolation acoustically as well as visually. The area of the “office” – Coffee Shop like environment – is thought to be comfortable and recreate vibrant common known space being socially active thus stimulating the creativity, collaboration and building community.

Due to the really short time given between knowing company’s culture and background and designing the space, we could not relay on industrial furniture companies, which give mostly a 90 days delivery. We decided to proceed, as we already have done before, with the customisation of furniture pieces realising  quickly that a furniture booklet was about to be developed in collaboration with the artisans.

Our pieces create flexible spaces. The design is made to be composed, decomposed and even dismantled when required. The different spaces are partly defined leaving freedom to different modes of use. We were really proud to see that the space has revealed a good adaption and successful flexibility also in most extreme needs as for instance the Covid 19 pandemic period.

Facts & Credits
Project title  AIRHELP Berlin Headquarters
Typology  Offices, workspace
Location  Friedrichshain, Berlin, Germany 
Architecture firm  Frederic Fourrichon Architecture
Art direction  Alejandra Albarrán
Design team  Maria Rovagna
Client  AirHelp Germany GmbH
Date of completion  March 2019
Area  630 m2
Awards  Office of the Month, OFFICELOVIN JUNE 2019, Silver at the New Your Design Awards for Best Corporate Interior Design in 2019, Gold at the Berlin Design Awards for best Corporate Interior Design 2019
Photography  Luca Girardini


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