The offices of Swiss & Global are housed by a free-standing town house from the beginning of last century, a building with four floors and clean, rigorous forms, characterized by the white plasterwork facade marked by string courses in decorative concrete. The chief purpose of the project has been to harmonize the interiors with the guidelines of Swiss & Global Asset Management; this has resulted in a radical alteration of the existing rooms, still based on a traditional office layout, where the massive and textural quality of the old building is offset by the wholly abstract nature of the volumes and the internal surfaces.
The interior design aims to focus the attention on relational spaces in such a way as to encourage communication. The vertical structure according to which traditional offices are organized mirrors hierarchies that often limit the interaction between different groups and work teams. The different floors are therefore developed according to a horizontal spatial-organizational scheme, where the environments allow considerable visual fluidity.
The new distributive arrangement is defined by volumes in coloured glass around which flows and itineraries are organized. These connecting elements organize the spaces into offices and common areas, allowing changeable perceptions of the space. The outer walls are completely hidden by an immaterial facing in white wooden lists placed at slight intervals in front of opaque backlit or transparent panels which allow daylight to pass in the points where they cover the windows: the result is an everchangeable interior. Each floor features a service area distinguished by large coloured fields, places where the colour becomes denser on all vertical and horizontal surfaces and areas of passage. In the whole building the Kerlite floors and the plasterwork ceilings are characterized by the same shade of grey, a device aimed at eliminating the perception of the horizon and create an impression of a world abstracted from its surroundings.
