Designing work spaces that encourage interaction and collaboration among workers is, needless to say, quite common these days. But an increasing focus is also being placed on providing cloistered private spaces within the larger collaborative plan as a necessary balance, to help workers relax, focus and un-clutter the mind.
Architects Enrico and Sara Cleva were able to achieve such a space utilizing the soft surfaces of products from Vancouver-based molo to create the backbone for a dedicated relaxation and brainstorming room in the new Milanese headquarters of DoveVivo, an online home sharing platform company (their name literally translates as “Where I live”).
For a staff dominated by young, creative and highly educated knowledge workers, collaborative spaces were of course a must. At first glance, the 1,500-sq.-m. office is dominated by wide open areas and multiple meeting rooms that feature colours aligned the company’s brand identity of white, red and black, or furnished and finished with light pastel colours taken form the company’s website.
Amongst these collaborative-intensive spaces, however, is an antidote: a place to unpack the mind that they call DovePenso (literally “Where I think”). Here, molo partitions, soft carpets and the popular stone-like pouffs called Livingstones by French outfit Smarin set a stage intended to cultivate free-flowing ideas.
The room has plenty of natural light, and in the long summer days the molo lights and partitions are mainly seen as soft, sculpted paper volumes. In shorter winter afternoons, they cast a warm light to create a cozy and relaxing space to either activate or relax the mind.
Elements of both biophilic design and a Zen garden are incorporated: cloud-shaped paper lighting and the stone-shaped poufs, made of natural wool, are immediately recognizable as natural elements, whereas a large, lush tropical plant brings actual nature into the space.
DoveVivo photography by Martina Scaravati.