CDS, a Headquarters Designed Around the Organisation

More than 5,000 sqm transformed from a former megastore: at the new Sicilian headquarters of the group, the layout responds to the real flows of large-scale retail, balancing meeting, privacy and training.

CDS – Centro Distribuzione Supermercati, the large-scale retail company belonging to the Romano Group, operates across Sicily under several brands, with a network of stores and an assortment of nearly 50,000 products. Purchasing, sales, franchising, private-label products and marketing come together in an organisation built around constant interaction with suppliers, buyers and category managers. This is where the project by architect Paolo Pampanoni begins: not with an abstract office model, but with the actual way the company works.

The project was commissioned following a visit by the Group’s President to the Superemme headquarters in Cagliari, also designed by the same studio. The starting point was a company that had grown faster than its own headquarters: spaces had evolved through successive additions and had become increasingly congested, no longer matching the scale the business had reached. The new headquarters, covering around 3,000 sqm and accommodating more than 100 permanent employees, had to bring together sales and purchasing offices, the Group’s companies, numerous meeting rooms, training facilities and the company’s “Accàde” Academy.

Pampanoni approached the layout starting from the organisational chart. In large-scale retail, meeting suppliers and assessing products across every category are part of everyday operations. As a result, the functional structure is clearly focused on meeting spaces: the number of rooms has increased significantly compared with the previous headquarters, complemented by phone booths for private conversations and training sessions, as well as storage areas for product samples.

This led to the decision to divide the headquarters into two clearly distinct areas: a public area for guests and suppliers, and an operational area. The two are firmly separated to ensure privacy, focus and efficiency. Visitors can enter the operational area only when accompanied, while employees access it using personal access codes.

The main challenge was the existing building envelope: a former call centre that later became a large retail store, with an internal height of around 11.5 metres. Inside the existing reinforced-concrete shell, a steel structure was introduced to support the partition walls, organise the routing of building services, create acoustic and thermal separation, and bring the overall volume back to a scale suited to everyday work.

The double-height space remains visible at the entrance, where the Romano Group reception opens onto the main social area, with the company logo displayed on the wall at the far end. More than a training room, Accàde is conceived as a space for interaction with the company network and the outside world, bringing together internal training and events.

The social area, furnished with soft seating, light-coloured surfaces and greenery, is separated from the operational spaces by glazed partitions with a satin-finished band at mid-height. This solution maintains visual continuity between the different areas while reducing direct exposure of the workstations and providing a greater degree of privacy.
Acoustic comfort is addressed on several levels. Carpet flooring, sound-absorbing screens between workstations and ceiling treatments reduce internal reverberation and limit sound transmission through the openings created for building services. The Etoile partition walls, meanwhile, provide acoustic separation between rooms. In the offices and quotation areas, the choice falls on Ritmica Alluminio with double glazing (70 mm), while the meeting rooms use Unica with 66.2A acoustic glass: a slimmer, single-glazed profile (51 mm) designed to achieve comparable performance with a reduced footprint.

The backlighting conditions and the many workstations located away from the façades explain the particular attention given to artificial lighting: a bright, balanced light designed to support concentration and the natural biorhythms of the people using the space. In terms of colour, the project adopts a neutral and flexible approach to possible combinations. Walls, floors and furniture create a versatile base that allows the client freedom to adapt the space, while fixed communication panels tell the story of the company and its activities. Since CDS constantly produces campaigns and colourful communication materials, this neutral foundation is designed to prevent the project from becoming tied to its original concept. Instead, it can evolve over time, allowing the company to layer new colours, graphics and combinations onto the space.