Element Studios México City, Spontaneous Work Systems, Mexican Architecture, Architect, Design
Element Studios, Mexico : Work Systems Architecture
Mexican Interior Project design by Manadaº Architecture
8 Aug 2013
Element Studios
Design: Manadaº Architecture
Location: México City
The New Flexible and Spontaneous Work Systems by Manadaº Architecture Receive the PRISMA Award.
“In 30 or 40 years we will be amazed to see how un-livable where the office spaces of today.”
– Jean Nouvel
Mexico City, Mexico, June 12, 2013 – In the last decades there has been a degeneration of the “Action Office”, a model generated in the 1960s by Robert Propst, resulting on a series of homogeneous, universal, anonymous and repetitive spaces, which form a deficient spatial response for today’s working space needs.
photos from architects
Today, working shapes and formats shift rapidly, the constant redefinition of collaborations, privacy, and the in-creasing interest for the well being of the workers, are directly related to the environments where we work in. Places where today, change and adaptation are always a constant.
For Element Studios, manadaº architecture was seeking to generate an inspiring space that encourages random en-counters among the workers of a creative agency, looking always to generate “spontaneous collaboration spaces”.
“We find the most complex schemes of human interaction in collaboration,” says Alejandro Tapia of manadaº. “And within the search for materials and technologies to shape different, friendly, ecological, recyclable, transformable and adaptable spaces, we designed a series of reconfigurable spaces where users can choose the type of space they will need to perform their tasks, based on parameters like phys-ical needs of the space, number of collaborators, type of collaborators, and so on”.
The project they created for Element Studios manages the program through the “flexible band”, which is capable of hosting the totality of activities thanks to its capacity to ad-aptation and permeability without losing the capacity to tension, or become impermeable and fragment in smaller spaces if needed. The total project’s surface is 964 m2, due to a restricted budget only 316 m2 were “activated” by the proposal, but as manadaº was able to stack a second layer in it, they generated a total of 1,281 m2 of usable surface.
The tight execution calendar (16 weeks from commission of the project, to project development, construction, and completion), functionality, economy and construction speed were an essential part of the itinerary and the way we tackled the execution. Paradoxically the spaces get “free” by the definition of different work “stages” that lack obvious formal hierarchies. The “flexible band” that integrates the intervention is shaped by 174 prefab, light-weight and structural wood panels. This panels create the space when they get installed on site and resolve the pro-gram needs by its shape and its great capacity for adapta-tion to the original space, which is one of the priorities we efficiently wanted to solve.
The concept and design of Element Studios got manadaº architecture awarded with a PRISMA Award by Habitat Ex-po in Mexico City in the category of office space larger than 300 m2.
photos from architects
Flexible and Spontaneous Work Systems Mexico – Building Information
Architects: manadaº – Arch. Alejandro Tapia, Arch. Katerina Alatzia
Collaborators: Jorge Arteaga, Sofía Pérez
Location: Mexico City
Date: 2013
Area 1,281 m2
Photographs: manadaº / Jaime Navarro
Construction: manadaº
Wood work: lainvencible.org
CONTACT:
Manada, Katerina Alatzia, Alejandro Tapia: info(at)manada.com.mx, www.manada.com.mx
about manada
manadaº is an architectural studio dedicated to confrontation and expansion of architectural boundaries.
Element Studios México City images / information from Manadaº Architecture
Location: SURGENTES SUR, MEXICO D.F., México, North America
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