Project: Hatria Offices
Interior Design: The Room Studio
Lead by Meritxell Ribé and Josep Puigdomènech
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Year 2021
Yext and photos: Courtesy of The Room Studio
Initially, we started with offices that had already been generically refurbished, with no specific use. A completely open-plan space, bare, without divisions, with a raised floor and generalised lighting.
The aim was to accommodate it for a heritage company, providing it with warmth, balance and harmony. The challenge was to convert an office space, which tends to be cold and without personality, into a very familiar, welcoming, elegant and sober place. The use of wood and curved shapes has been combined to transmit the feeling of serenity that the client was looking for.
The Hatria Offices project
A layout was designed in accordance with these needs. It had to be fluid and harmonious, both in the meeting rooms and in the common areas, office, reception and executive offices. One of these offices had to be focused on more personal meetings and the other on a more institutional treatment, without losing the casual tone, which would encourage relaxed and close conversations. For this reason, the interior design and decoration had to be elegant but personal, far from cold and hieratic.
The two meeting rooms, set up for shareholders’ meetings or committees, had to accommodate 8-10 people and 4-6 people respectively and at the same time transmit spaciousness and comfort. This objective was achieved by creating curved walls that run through the spaces and accommodate the large tables that preside over the two rooms. The interior design is therefore free of sometimes rigid parameters, adapting to the real needs of the project.
Large windows run along the walls of these rooms, letting in the light from outside. To ensure that this light reaches all the offices, a segmentation of spaces has been created with large windows, which allows for great communication both visually and in terms of luminosity, while at the same time creating a dialogue with the curved and sinuous shapes that welcome the route in a friendly manner.
The difficulty we encountered when defining this segmentation was the presence of some large pillars located in the middle of the space. They were completely covered by incorporating them into the partitions, covered with chestnut wood and glass partitions.
The planned offices were to have a more intimate character, but at the same time they were to be transparent and open, with light coming in from the facade. This privacy was further reinforced by the layout of the spaces, so that they would be out of sight from the reception area. In this way, the desired intimacy and privacy were preserved without having to install opaque enclosures, but rather glazed walls that filtered natural light.
For the floor, a technical flooring with light carpeting has been introduced throughout the space, thus creating a counterpoint of materials and an atmosphere with acoustic comfort and light in the interior.
Lighting is a basic element in all our projects, and in this case it has been integrated into the project according to the characteristics of the space: the height of the perimeter airs and the separation with partitions have been used and the spaces have been arranged by height, indirectly illuminating them. In addition, each room has been illuminated with decorative lighting.
Hatria Offices is a project in which noble materials, light colours and touches of black have been used to create comforting interiors, as they have the virtue of mixing elegance and sobriety with a modern and timeless style.
