THE CREATIVE PROCESS
The plan form for Maersk Line encapsulates a balance that we sought between hard physical enclosures that are need to form meeting rooms, server rooms etc and the intermediate spaces in between. By carefully planning the interstitial spaces so that they become useable areas, construction costs had been reduced as less walls were needed.

The interior concept for Maersk Line is in the form of three islands connected by a wood finished corridor and defined at high level by a floating ceiling. These ‘islands’ float in a sea of work areas and social spaces, circulation space. Smaller islands in the form of circular print stations also float in this sea.

The central island is akin to a ship, designed with angled sides and a curved hull in front, made from Barisol tensioned fabric. This hull contains the reception on one side but serves to unite the internal spaces on the other side by allowing people to flow around it from both ends of the office.

On plan, this block has been skillfully crafted into a ‘ship’ by constructing a new layer of veneered wall in front of the existing lift lobby and services core, thereby hiding most of the unappealing walls and doors to this core.

A large training room and several meeting rooms and a server room/stores forms the second and third islands.

The design of the workstations in rows was the result of responding to the client’s wish for an innovative solution to desking to allow individual users to work at various heights. Hierarchy was abolished and no single person was to be placed in a room. The total open plan approach and the seating in rows provided much space saving and allowed generous social areas to be incorporated into the intermediate spaces. Powering the height adjustable workstations of blue fritted coloured glass and sending Cat 6 cables to each desk was done with our custom designed IT dividing walls.