Beiersdorf Offices – Hamburg
Ippolito Fleitz Group designed a dynamic workplace strategy for Beiersdorf’s Hamburg campus, emphasizing flexibility and functionality to support various work activities and create a value-based, identity-forming environment.
Dynamic working requires dialogue and encounters – rooms that enable flexibility as well as intermediate spaces. Understanding the office as a space of potential and designing these exciting interfaces is not only important to us, but also to Beiersdorf, for whom we developed a global workplace strategy in close collaboration with company employees. The new campus at the company’s headquarters in Hamburg demonstrates what distinguishes this identity-forming workplace of the future.
Communication, collaboration, concentration and contemplation: Providing the optimum environment for the respective activity was the overriding goal that Beiersdorf was committed to achieve. Working on the basis that flexibility and functionality are equally important, and that collaboration and sharing are key, but at the same time that space is allowed for individual freedom and different work styles, a value-based philosophy was drawn up that now forms the basis of the new global workplace strategy and the design of the Hamburg campus. In essence, this means that a choreographed canon of room modules for focussed work and retreat, discreet and informal conversations while sitting or standing, concentrated contemplation while lying down, small workshops and big presentations, and even for spontaneous meetings and co-working situations is found throughout the new building – creating an intelligent landscape with a high level of offerings with which employees can identify. The company’s values are given a spatial context with a natural confidence on the six floors: The topic ‘care’ is not only understood as skincare, but also as interpersonal relationships, a culture of respect and care for the environment and for society.
This is first evident on the entrance level: In the Working Café and Campus Restaurant, every employee is welcomed with a grand gesture. Functioning as the centrepiece of the campus, a transparent and lively community space has been created on the ground floor, which can be used as an extended workplace at any time of day. The Collaboration Hub on the second floor is also available to all campus employees. The floor plan, which is networked with other buildings, serves as an agile interaction zone with a variety of formats and spaces that are just as dynamic as the collaborative exchange that takes place here. The levels above form the Office, which also accommodates different working styles in a wide spectrum of spatial settings.
In order to create strong, value-added identification motifs throughout the entire corporate headquarters, which each employee can adopt at will, we focused on flexible design in addition to adaptable communication and collaboration formats. This means that the whole space from floor to ceiling can be utilised in an agile way and be changed with minimum effort: Textile curtains can be opened or closed as required, acoustic partition walls can be moved, green, modular room dividers can be relocated, and furniture configurations changed. Even carpet tiles can be easily replaced, the wayfinding system on the ceiling rearranged, and the closed room modules repositioned. Depending on the situation, each area can therefore take on a new form whenever needed. Thus the 140 metre-long corridor, which runs through the building like a highline, is transformed from a classic access area into a spontaneous meeting zone, turning the act of coming together into a valuable experience.
Design: Ippolito Fleitz Group
Photography: Philip Kottlorz
