As one of the only remaining family-owned high-end watchmaking brands since 1875, Audemars Piguet is a leader in haute horlogerie by combining a deep-rooted tradition and the latest cutting-edge technology. In order to support the company’s growth, we were entrusted with conceiving an avant-garde work environment near its hometown of Le Brassus, in the heart of the Vallée de Joux in the Swiss Jura mountains.
Using the analogy of a village, we created a forward-looking and resilient workplace, facilitating the development of new work dynamics for the future of the company while reinforcing the feeling of belonging and connection to the surroundings.
In order to break down the open-plan workspace into smaller team clusters and create a sense of neighbourhood and community, all enclosed spaces, from collaboration rooms to focus nooks, were conceived as small houses. Strategically distributed around the catalyst spaces, they have the particularity of being rotated 15 degrees (30 minutes in watchmaking terms) with respect to the building’s rectangular structure, an arrangement that facilitates the natural flow of collaborators between the different areas.
With the ultimate goal of using this project as a testing ground for new ways of working, the enclosed rooms house several well-defined purpose-focused environments such as scrum corners, training theatres, huddle spaces, focus nooks, meeting or multipurpose rooms. The semi-open areas are organised in a flexible way following a dynamic workstyles principle: buzz area for noisy activity, project spaces for collaborative work, hot desk for nomadic collaborators, flex area for regular teams and silent zone for concentration.
Beside this, as a tribute to Le Brassus, we extracted several unique colour palettes by studying the façades of some of the buildings in the village. We then applied these colour schemes subtly throughout the different rooms and spaces, not only colouring the different surfaces but also choosing the appropriate materials to match this selection.
