In 2018, Stella, one of the largest luxury shoemakers in the world, commissioned the DESFA GROUP design firm to develop a master plan of their corporate facilities and to design its new state of the art product creation center, with the idea that it would house the entire product development team and the respective creative shoe designer teams from all over the world.   In 2021, Stella commissioned, again, another exciting project to DESFA GROUP. This time the scope involved the design of the upper management’s workspace division. This would be an extension project within the original product creation center.  The project scope involved a total of 1,200 square meters office located in one of the existing building wings, which included open workspaces, a large conference room, two small meeting rooms, a global strategic room, and a collaboration lounge.  

Design Concept

The primary design goal was to create a dynamic work environment that would allow the management team to collaborate and focus effectively regarding the company’s strategic directions.  With Stella’s long tradition for being an open centered organization with a strong collaboration culture, the allocation of private offices within the facilities became unnecessary.  This lead the design team to allocate the required programs by focusing and prioritizing on its level of privacy, rational workflow, and the accessibility to natural light.   

The general fit-out material palette is meant to be simple and minimal to provide a canvas for colorful furniture, artifacts representative of the company’s milestones, and playful art works.   Materials such as oak wood, white cement board, and matte concrete tile floor were used throughout the space to create an intimate cozier space, contrasting with the vast industrial open setting. The integration of acoustic felt panels throughout the meeting spaces helped to balance and mitigate a lot of the hard surfaces and reverberation that existed within the space.

The general plan layout is defined by a central corridor that interacts with a series of openings and spaces throughout the length of the corridor. This central passageway helps connect the workspace focused environments to all of the collaborative spaces. At the same time, the main corridor wall is designed to reduce the visibility of the structural column grid for a less rigid space. The main wall at the corridor also performs as a screen separator between the desks area and the primary circulation to bring more transparency and natural light throughout the space.  Small meeting rooms and the art gallery are located along the central wall to help extend the light deep into the workspace.  Long benches along the art gallery were designed to provide a moment of respite from the highly intense workflow.

The primary lounge which is open to the different user groups is located between the central corridor and the large conference room. This space accommodates the different needs of collaboration of the managers and guests, as well as creating a welcoming space that focuses on comfort as this is one of the key arrival spaces. The lounge has a defragmented white ceiling with strips of light dissecting it into different portions that give this space a dynamic feel with its perception of movement.

The colorful lounge chairs, designed by SEdA, a furniture company that collaborates with Desfa Group in other furniture design ventures, are playfully placed at the lounge area and serve as small meeting points throughout the space. These gathering moments help enhance the secure and friendly work environment, as well as promoting seamlessly the collaboration between the different user groups.