CitySpace is one of the leading Polish flexible office operators. NOVO, its space between Jerozolimskie Avenue and Nowogrodzka Street in central Warsaw, covers 2,800 m² across two floors, with 328 workstations. The design project for NOVO won the European Property Award for the Best Office Interior category for Poland.

The project had to reconcile three demands that usually pull against each other.
- design, because in flexible offices people choose with their eyes.
- economics, because every square metre has to earn its keep.
- sustainability, because the most valuable material was the fit-out already in place. Most projects manage only two of the three.

CitySpace took over the floors complete with a previous tenant's fit-out. The standard response is to strip it out and start again. We did the opposite: we treated the existing interior as a resource. The ceiling infrastructure, floors, water and drainage connections, glazed partitions, stained glass, black steel frames, cork and wood finishes all stayed, as did parts of the kitchen joinery — fronts and carcasses both. Layout changes were deliberately limited. The wooden floor was renovated rather than replaced.

What stayed also set the design. The inherited interior had a strong geometric language — grids, rhombuses, arches — and a palette of yellow, grey and navy. Rather than fight it, we extended it: a new grid of squares and rectangles now runs through custom carpets, ceiling installations and architectural details, carrying an expanded palette that grew out of the original one.

New materials were chosen with the same logic. Around 70% of the furniture comes from Polish manufacturers, which cuts transport emissions. Half of the acoustic ceiling material is made from recycled PET; wallcoverings are recycled vinyl. The original lighting was cold and purely general; we replaced it with four layers — task, ambient, accent and decorative — matched to each zone.

The brief was commercial as much as environmental. Workstations went up by 20.9%; conference rooms were halved, because oversized, underused meeting rooms are space that earns nothing. The six that remain are named after Warsaw districts and take 2 to 17 people on mobile furniture.

The corridors carry 159 paper artworks by Marlena Stawarz, each abstracting a district of the city.

"NOVO was created under the motto 'Quiet centre of a loud city', and this idea guided us from the start." — Rafał Mazurczak, Managing Director, CitySpace.