Alsendo is one of Central Europe's fastest-growing technology companies, a leader in e-commerce logistics. Rapid growth pushed it out of its old premises and into a larger headquarters in central Warsaw.

The brief was one line, and deceptively hard: modern, but not cold. Most offices manage one or the other. Chrome and glass deliver modern and read as clinical; warmth usually arrives at the cost of looking dated.

We ran the brand through the architecture rather than applying it to the walls. Alsendo's purple moves across painted surfaces, wallpapers, carpets and upholstery, so the office is recognisably theirs from any angle. The warmth comes from the other direction: wood, soft lighting and textiles set against the harder materials.

The plan gives people somewhere to go for each kind of task — focus rooms for concentrated work, meeting spaces placed directly beside the workstations rather than banished to a corridor, and chill-out areas for everything in between. Proximity was the point. A meeting room that requires a long walk is a meeting room people stop using.A good office is not an aesthetic exercise. It is a tool for reaching business goals, and it is judged on whether the team can do their work in it.