O2 Hub
| Client | O2 |
|---|---|
| Location | Prague — BB Centrum, Gamma building |
| Year | 2016 |
| Status | Realized |
| Discipline | interior-design |
| Services | concept, design, visualization, project-documentation, engineering, production, installation, author-supervision, project-management, construction-management |
Brief
O2 Czech Republic ran an architectural competition to turn the atrium of its headquarters from a representative pass-through into an active workplace. The brief was to create a space that works at the same time as an informal meeting room, a quiet zone for short focused work, and a coffee hub for staff and visitors. The intervention had to be inserted into the existing building — without touching the atrium’s shell or any structural element.
room411.architects won the competition and took on the full scope: from concept and design through to turnkey realisation.
Concept
The hub is composed as a village inside the atrium. The functions — meeting, lounge, coffee bar, reading — are split into small objects whose combined scale is human, not the height of the atrium.
The principal elements are wooden meeting booths shaped as abstracted houses with upholstered seating, suspended greenery (kokedama) hung from a steel grid that follows the rhythm of the atrium structure, a coffee bar with a wave-shaped wooden base, and a lounge zone with upholstered armchairs for ad-hoc meetings. The design rests on the contrast between soft light wood, fabric and live greenery against the cool glass, steel and stone of the existing atrium.
TODO — in the design phase the meeting booths were coloured (turquoise/yellow/red); the realised version moved to a wooden finish without coloured surfaces.
Solution
room411 delivered the project turnkey — from the winning competition entry through 3D visualization, project documentation and shop drawings for the key elements (meeting booths, planting-rail table, coffee bar) to production coordination, on-site delivery, author supervision and project management.
The hub was completed in September 2016. The opening was publicly announced by O2 Czech Republic’s CEO Tomáš Budník on his Twitter account: “Tomorrow we open a new O2 HUB in our atrium — a place for meetings, inspiration and a coffee break. I think we nailed it!”
TODO — exact BB Centrum / Gamma building address, intervention area in m², team beyond the lead architect, architectural competition name and organiser, material and supplier specifications.
