Designing the Space Around the Organisation

From analysing the company’s workflows to introducing a steel structure inside the existing building: architect Paolo Pampanoni explains the approach and decisions behind the new CDS headquarters.

When you started working with CDS, what aspects of the company’s way of working did you need to understand before you could begin designing? And was there anything you discovered by looking more closely at the organisation that changed the initial direction of the project?

Our approach to every project starts with an analysis of how the client works and how the company is organised, with a particular focus on understanding internal relationships and interactions with the outside world. In this case, there were no major changes during the design process, because the first stage of the project was dedicated precisely to gathering and analysing this information. By the time we began developing the design, we already had a very clear picture, so the initial ideas remained largely unchanged. We had two main points of reference: on one side, the existing building structure and envelope; on the other, the company’s organisation, with its different functions and ways of working. The process was therefore quite straightforward, following a design method that we always try to apply with great consistency.

The existing building presented some rather unusual conditions for a workplace. What opportunities did you see in the structure and, on the other hand, what constraints led to the most complex design decisions?

The building was essentially a large box, somewhat disproportionate because of its considerable height. Yet this height, together with the overall freedom of the floor plan, turned out to be a great opportunity.

When we first entered the building, we found that, apart from the toilet blocks and the upper mezzanines, which had to remain in their existing positions, the rest of the space was largely open, with only a few constraints created by the columns. From a planning point of view, this was a particularly favourable condition for a project like CDS.

The height also allowed us to create a substructure, almost a kind of architecture within the architecture, mainly designed to accommodate building services and acoustic treatment systems.

Making the most of this unusual configuration required a different approach from a conventional project, but that was precisely what made it so stimulating. This led to some of the project’s key features: the double-height entrance, the two-level area at the front of the building housing meeting rooms and administrative spaces, and, on the other side, all the operational areas arranged on a single level, beneath the self-supporting steel structure that allowed us to integrate the building services and acoustic solutions.

In a project of this scale, privacy, acoustic comfort and opportunities for interaction cannot be treated as separate issues. How did you find the right balance, and what role did the different Etoile, Ritmica and Unica solutions play in this approach?

A company that owns supermarkets and manages purchasing, sales and, more broadly, commercial activities requires a very clear separation between its different functional areas.

The meetings between internal buyers and external suppliers, for example, require a kind of “neutral zone”: a space where buyers can meet their contacts and review product samples. It is a highly interactive working environment, but it also needs to provide a high level of privacy, as commercially sensitive topics such as prices, costs and offers are discussed.

For this reason, within an open and accessible area, we created a series of private meeting rooms that can be booked when needed. Beyond this area, we established a very clear boundary towards the operational spaces. Transparency was also an important feature of the project. The windows were located exclusively along the perimeter of the building, while its essentially rectangular shape meant that there were only a limited number of sources of natural light. The internal partitions therefore needed to be as permeable to light as possible while remaining acoustically effective. This is why we chose the Ritmica and Unica partitions. They combine a high level of visual permeability with significant acoustic performance, allowing natural light to move through the space while maintaining the necessary acoustic separation. As for the phone booths, these were integrated into the architectural structure using doors derived from the Ritmica collection. They offer high acoustic performance, with an aluminium frame and glass door. The choice of these products was therefore driven by two factors: the visual lightness of the structures and their acoustic performance

Now that the project is complete and can be experienced as a whole, is there an aspect you consider particularly successful, or a solution whose outcome exceeded or changed your initial expectations? And is there anything from this experience that you would take with you into a future workplace project?

I am still impressed by the result we achieved with the steel structure built inside the existing building. It organises and divides the spaces while also supporting the plasterboard walls, acoustic ceilings, technical ceilings and glass partitions. It was a fairly complex project, developed to manage the excessive height of the building without having to suspend elements from the roof. The existing roof structure would not have been able to support those loads, and this approach would also have made the installation process much more complicated. We therefore worked from the ground up, creating a kind of large grid of steel profiles that made the entire internal layout possible. This was not a solution we had initially planned. At a certain point, however, it became clear that it was the only approach that would allow us to manage such a complex spatial configuration, combining plasterboard and glazed elements. I have to say that, in some ways, the structure was even more beautiful when it was still completely exposed. Its structural and engineering character had an extremely strong aesthetic quality.