Quirk, a South Africa-based digital agency, reached out to Karpinski Design to design their new offices in Cape Town. The company, which offers web development, search engine optimization and email marketing, chose to settle into the majority of the second floor, the entire top floor and a new roof top pavilion in a space previously occupied by an internal car park and the CMT operation.
After the first site visit, it was obvious that the challenge would be in creating a suitable interior for individual business entities within the enormous chasms of space. The acoustic and thermal properties, provided the team with an exciting challenge and even more exciting opportunity for an amazing interior.
The approach was to create intimate meeting areas, where ceilings were introduced into all the enclosed spaces, arranged around the centralized ‘main access’ with the remainder of the top floor providing an open plan seating area, conference hall and shared canteen space.
Many original features of the building were maintained including the combination of concrete and brickwork construction for all the interior walls. Later, these walls were left raw or painted depending on the area and final identity we wanted to achieve. Inspiration was taken from the colour scheme left by the CMT operation whilst new paint patterns/graphics and techniques were used to retain some of the factory feel.Brick on end details in the walls were introduced to bring some texture to the large extents of brickwork and acoustic dampening measures were introduced to break up all the hard surfaces.
In Quirk’s main open plan space, a 3 way ‘Room Within A Room’ was introduced to define separate areas, bring in the warmth of raw timber and to create a centrepiece which housed 3 interlinked meeting rooms.
The school was designed to house student areas, training rooms, lecturer offices, review rooms and large conference facilities whilst the roof top pavilion was built from scratch,introducing extensive structural additions to accommodate the new structure. The pavilion‘s large steel staircase opened up to views over Salt River all the way to the Hottentots Holland Mountains and lead up to a full bar and entertainment area with substantial astroturfed terrace with views up Devils Peak Mountain.
Quirk’s new office space nutured the business culture, which was described as being, “a little crazy, a little nerdy, a little mad scientist and a lot obsessed with cats… but all making for an interesting “day at the office”.
