WHEN DESIGNING AN OFFICE ON THE 45TH FLOOR, NOTHING STANDS BETWEEN THE OFFICE SPACES AND THE SUN, AND THE SHADOW BECOMES AN ARCHITECTURAL RAW MATERIAL FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES. THE CONFLICT IS OBVIOUS: HOW CAN WE ENABLE VIEWING THE BREATHTAKING TEL-AVIV PANORAMIC SCENE, WHILE KEEPING OUT THE BLINDING GLARE OF THE SUN? A GLARE THAT NOT ONLY MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE TO WORK ON A COMPUTER BUT DOES NOT ALLOW WORKING AT ALL.
The strategy we have developed is based on double shadow lines. The first, completely technical, electric shading on the windows. The second line is much more interesting: a screen (Mashrabiya) of wooden blocks located between the rooms and the public space. Thus, the sun becomes a choreographer of shadow dancing on the floor, constantly changing and transforming throughout the day.
The walls of the wooden blocks screen were designed using a parametric software so that they appear random, but their density varies according to need – at the top, the wall is airy, allowing daylight to penetrate the interior spaces of the office, and at the bottom the blocks are becoming denser to allow privacy for the lawyers working in these rooms.
When designing a law firm office, on the sketched pages appear one of the architect's oldest enemies - the corridor. Unlike high-tech companies, that operate almost entirely in a completely open-space environment, law firms still retain the traditional work space - a room - a confined space for one person and his computer. Two rows of such rooms and we get a corridor! A corridor is not considered a 'place' ('place' being both a short word and our holy grail).
To overcome the corridor issue, we pulled out the project's secret weapon: the customer. Adv. Gilad Baron is both a professional and a brave man. Gilad agreed to give up several internal rooms in favor of creating an open loft. Thus, an office covering 1,000 square meters is (almost) devoid of corridors. The movement of people passing through a series of wide, funnel-shaped spaces, which we created by rotating some of the internal masses.
The photographs attest: the color fan is very reflective of Tel Aviv - gray concrete, coal gray, white, blue and wood. It is a restrained space, with technical lighting and white walls that form a neutral background to the art work. The motif of the cube, like a musical piece, repeats in different variations that correspond with each other: in the mashrabiya, in the grooves on the walls and the counter and in the pattern of film on the glass walls. And Tel Aviv also looks great from above.
