The BNP Paribas EXEO Campus at Parque das Nações, Lisbon, consolidates teams previously distributed across multiple locations into three interconnected buildings: Aura, Echo, and Lumnia. Openbook Architecture led the interior architecture and workplace design strategy for the campus, which forms BNP Paribas Group’s largest office hub in Portugal.

Rather than applying a uniform office model across the campus, Openbook began with a study of how employees worked, moved, and interacted. Workshops with staff identified differing requirements for concentrated individual work, informal exchange, and structured collaboration. These findings informed a workplace intended to accommodate changing activities without relying on a single open-plan typology.

Balancing collaboration and concentration

Openbook developed the ‘Match Point’ concept around qualities associated with competitive tennis: observation, anticipation, adaptability, and focus. Its principal spatial expression is the ‘Highlighted Workplace’, in which collaborative areas alternate with quieter zones for concentrated work.

Open workstations are supplemented by silent pods, phone booths, and rooms that can be reconfigured for training, group work, or larger gatherings. Each floor also incorporates a Floor Hub, providing an informal meeting point between individual desks and formal meeting rooms.

The approach allows employees to change working environments throughout the day while limiting the acoustic and functional conflicts associated with large, uniformly open offices. It also gives the campus a degree of adaptability as team sizes and working practices evolve. Material choices reinforce these distinctions: ochres and terracotta tones inspired by clay tennis courts are paired with deep greens, neutral finishes, timber, and natural textures, creating visual variation without extensive physical separation.

Shared social infrastructure
Communal spaces extend the workplace beyond desk-based activities. Cafeterias within each building combine dining, self-catering, and lounge areas, establishing settings differentiated from the working floors. The eleventh floor of Aura accommodates the campus’s principal visitor and event functions, including a multipurpose event space, fine dining area, bar, boardroom, and meeting rooms. An accessible panoramic terrace provides additional outdoor space.

Lumnia, positioned between Aura and Echo, houses facilities shared across the campus. These include an auditorium with a main hall, foyer, and visitors’ lounge. At ground level, the Portugal Lab can shift between a work lounge, meeting rooms, and a larger assembly configuration. Designing these spaces for multiple uses allows the campus to accommodate changing requirements without dedicating separate rooms to every activity.

Reusing Furniture at Scale

One of the project’s most significant resource-efficiency measures was the decision to refurbish 84 percent of the campus’s furniture rather than replace it with new products. Across the 30,000-square-metre workplace, refurbishing existing furniture substantially extends the service life of these assets while reducing demand for newly manufactured furniture.

Instead of developing the interiors solely around newly specified pieces, the design had to accommodate and integrate existing furniture into the wider spatial and material system. This emphasis on longevity extends to the planning itself. Reconfigurable rooms, varied work settings, and shared spaces allow the workplace to respond to organisational change with fewer substantial physical alterations.

Daylight and solar control

Environmental performance is addressed at building scale through the relationship between orientation, façade design, and daylight. The envelope is configured to bring natural light into occupied areas while controlling unwanted solar gains, reducing the demand for mechanical cooling.

The spatial planning works alongside this strategy by distributing occupied areas and shared spaces to benefit from available daylight rather than treating environmental performance purely as a building-services issue.

Demand-responsive conditioning

Mechanical systems were developed alongside the architectural strategy rather than as an independent layer. Air conditioning operates according to demand rather than through blanket conditioning, requiring coordination between the architectural and engineering teams from the beginning of the design process. Together, facade performance, orientation, occupancy, and building services address energy demand through both passive and active measures. The campus has achieved LEED and WELL certifications, with Platinum targeted for both. The two frameworks address complementary aspects of environmental performance and occupant health and well-being.