The new Heineken – Dublin office is located opposite the historic Kilmainham Goal with a design intent reflecting a move to full open plan for all staff. The design aspires to create an exciting workplace full of vibrant colour, exciting lighting, exposed services, geometric texture and strong interpretations of Heineken brand graphics.

Existing ceilings are retained as floating rafts over desking with open services exposed in the remaining areas. Meeting room cubes are positioned at angles to create a streetscape of corners as you move through the office with quiet nooks for conversations and calls. Extensive glazed screens in the meeting room cubes open up long through views.

Challenges:

• To move a more tradition cubicle-based organization to a full open plan culture and bring energy and colour and life into their office environment.
• To place meeting rooms within the space to create a hierarchy of more intimate spaces that work for every scale of gathering required.
• To work within a tight budget and programme and to achieve both very successfully

The office is entered through an atrium and is a horse-shoe shaped floor plan around the central core. Inside the entrance there is a bar and seating area to the left and the boardroom to the right with the Creative Hub behind. Moving clockwise around you then encounter the first section of open plan desking with a series of meeting room cubes. Moving to the last section of the office, you pass the curved wall of the canteen to the second section of open plan desking with more meeting room cubes.

Removing the lay-in ceiling in the entrance areas and social areas expose the steel frame and services. This is contrasted with a large smooth white single reception and bar counter in corian. An ‘Interface’ carpet is used in a random chequer pattern to break down large open areas. Tom Dixon ‘flask’ pendent lighting through the reception create a festival atmosphere with accent pinpoints of light.

The bar is an integral part of the office being linked into the reception counter. It is flexible to allow for large groups and presentations which the striking chevron for the ‘Expona’ vinyl floors create visual interest when the space is unoccupied also. The perforated brass Tom Dixon ‘Cell’ pendent lighting through the bar create a warm light for evening events.

The oval boardroom is seen as a public space within the office. Super-graphics for the manifestations feature Heineken brands such as Heineken, Coors, Desperadoes, Orchard Thieves and more.

Large areas of glazing are provided to each room creating long open views throughout the office as within the Heineken culture, creative meetings are not seen as requiring privacy from co-corkers.

The colour palette works through a series of pale blues to dark navy with colours of linen, sand and dust to provide a subtle backdrop to more vibrantly colours meeting rooms which feature strong graphics on their glazed walls. Meeting rooms are carried out with strong accent colours of yellow, green, burgundy, green and red.