ranged around the perimeter on three
sides, and enclosed spaces define a central
gathering area beneath the roof vault, which
rises to a height of 12.6 m. ‘We wanted to
bring employees together,’ says Kääramees.
‘That was a challenge, because Estonians
are not very social.’
The boxes that house meeting rooms
and other activities are clad in plywood,
and the names of business leaders from
the first era of Estonian independence
are etched onto the glass. Corners are
rounded and stepped so people passing by
can perch there, as casually as pigeons on
a ledge. Natural light flooding down from
the glazed vault is carefully filtered, and the
library at one end of the room is canopied
to block direct sunlight. The suspended
light fittings were pared to a minimum to
reduce the load on the century-old concrete
beams. Carpets and acoustic panels absorb
sound, and felt-lined phone booths resem-
ble doll’s houses. A soft grey palette around
the perimeter becomes more colourful in
the central zone, which functions as a café
and an informal work area. The designers
reserved their best moves for the toilets.
One evokes swimmers half submerged in apool of blue water, and another is muralled
with an image of the first moon landing.
Innovative co-working space Here
East is a creative business and technology
resource for East London and an incubator
for start-ups. It occupies the 120,000-m^2
Press and Broadcasting Centre built for
the 2012 Olympics and is the new home of
choreographer Wayne McGregor and his
company of dancers. He commissioned
three studios from the firm of We Not I and
gave them Peter Brook’s two imperatives:
‘Anything can happen’ and ‘Something must
happen’. Their response was ‘to do as little as
possible as best we could’.
A timber tower clad in plywood –
black on the outside, natural within – rises
through three levels with a camera obscura
on the rooftop. In contrast to the raw steel
shed, it’s a refined composition that changes
form as you move around it. Works of art
(including a floor based on a design by Anni
Albers) enrich meeting and gathering spaces.
As bodies swirl gracefully around the white
studios, the tower serves as a fulcrum, rotated
45 degrees and imbued with a sense of drama.
Hungry Man Productions invited
bicoastal design firm Freeland Buck to »ÄRIPÄEV TALLINN
Arhitekt 11’s box-filled spatial strategy in the Estonian
capital unites Äripäev’s 280 employees on one floor.‘We’ve discovered
that the open
office is not very
productive’
Tõnu Tunnel88 SPACES