The colorful and flexible workplace for Relaxound offers employees a choice of the spaces where they want to do their work – as well as giving them a strong sense of unified purpose – feeling good about being part of a team. The design is based on social contact – collaborating in real time and space - but also refuge from social contact – for concentrating or withdrawing to do focused work. The office for Relaxound makes a strong argument for the importance of physical office space to a company’s collective culture – even after we have gotten used to the liberties and trust associated with working from home.

In order to create a sense of shared identity, a new mezzanine was introduced perpendicular to an existing one to together overlook a double-height studio space. In the areas with lower ceilings, very small rooms with sliding doors create spaces for employees to work alone or in small groups with acoustical privacy. A variety of other spaces offer employees a sense of shared openness while providing opportunity for refuge.

All building materials are used in a way to make one aware of the nature of the materials used – for example, through-dyed MDF is blue all the way through, so when you cut it, it shows the same color inside as out. Planes of MDF, exposed wood beams and columns, and the exposed steel of the mezzanine structure become an interlocked system of walls and doors for the small acoustically isolated rooms. These small rooms are designed for acoustical control: walls are made from thin but massive layers of MDF and echo is controlled by sound absorbing materials (fabrics, felt, and open cell aluminum). To prevent the sense that people are hiding behind closed doors, large glass walls connect employees visually to each other – even when they need acoustical privacy.

Color and light are used to create spaces of different qualities: small spaces are darker and cozier and the large space is brighter and louder. In the social areas where people come together, bright color is used - but in the general studio space the palette is simple and reduced, and not filled with visual noise. The small spaces are dark and atmospheric and might invite you to work in a different way. The design intends to be coherent but varied: the idea is to have real atmospheric choices.

Relaxound is a company that makes products to introduce relaxing natural sounds to physical environments - and its physical office space fulfills a collective and symbolic purpose that a virtual office cannot do by itself. To work in a relaxed way is part of the brand: so integrating choices of formal and informal spaces to do work, to socialize, to chill, to work in a cheerful and colorful place, to eat together - these are all part of how the office works.

Bruzkus Greenberg planned and designed not only all the public spaces on the ground floor and lower level, but also the office spaces for the ground-up office building at Berlin’s Alexanderplatz. Upstairs, the offices similarly combine aspects of hospitality, workplace, and residential design to create comfortable and effective spaces to work. Offices are designed around a shared kitchen/dining area which provides a collective sense of team unity and shared identity. Lots of distributed meeting rooms give teams the opportunity to collaborate. And individual spaces are grouped into well-scaled neighborhoods that allow employees to focus in quiet.

The design intends to combine what employees like about the “home office” and migrate that to the shared office – to have choices where you work, to work in a comfortable and relaxed way, to use domestic furniture and lighting conditions – to not feel so much like an old-fashioned “office.” The design offers office workers something more from their “shared office” than they could get from their “home office”- social interactions, a sense of being part of a team, nicer and larger scaled furniture than they have at home, settings like you’d see in a hotel lobby or a hip bar or a nice restaurant. This approach embraces the sharing economy – that you can get more than what you have in your own home by sharing it with the people you work with.

A Bank as a Community Living Room. Located inside a historic Post Office in Berlin- Friedenau, the design transforms the bank into a generous and welcoming neighborhood center. In addition to traditional banking services like ATMs, consulting rooms, and help desks, there are also unexpected spaces for a bank: a café, a colorful community living room, an interior garden, exhibition spaces, and public meeting rooms. While most banks are closing their brick and mortar locations, the PSD Bank has opened as a neighborhood center to welcome everyone in the community.

The project has a strong social, formal, and material idea. Socially, the room presents itself as a comfortable living room, with a welcoming café at the front, inviting guests to linger and feel at home. In particular, the inclusive design is intended to appeal to guests, such as Seniors, for whom modern digital banking may feel impersonal and alienating. Formally, the design introduces new architectural “boxes inside boxes” that sit within the restored banking hall and have a dialogue between new and old. Materially, the design mixes fresh new materials with historic ones – warm woods, shiny metals, pickled woods, terrazzo with recycled content - mixed with historic stone flooring, original dark wood columns, and historically accurate colors found under a hundred years of paint layers.

As a bank dedicated to the community where it is located, the design features local and German material manufacturers, furniture companies, suppliers, and crafts. And the design reuses and recycles as much as possible – so the historic shell was repaired - the flooring, the original wood paneled columns, and the plaster ceiling.
But the project is not just a historic renovation: it is intended to feel new and fresh and contemporary and vibrant and connected to the active life of the community. New materials live in happy dialogue with the old. And young and old alike are welcomed into their own neighborhood community center.

Working with Color! Ester Bruzkus Architekten use a strong color concept to bring the workspace for Futurice into a bright future. The design strategy gives each team space its own distinctive color: everything in the team rooms is unified by a common hue - wall paint, carpet, furniture, lighting, film on corridor glass panels, and fabric curtains. Custom meeting tables are made from painted steel frames with linoleum tops in different colors; workshop chairs have been purchased in the different colors of the rooms. As employees walk along the corridor, the team rooms present themselves a diverse choice of colorful and surprising shop windows.

The design strategy echoes the innovation consultancy Futurice’s own corporate mission: to improve communication and collaboration with new ways of working. Since collaboration with colleagues and with clients is so critical to the work that Futurice does, the team rooms receive most of the design attention: meeting rooms, phone booths, welcome areas, printer areas, storage spaces, kitchens, and multifunctional spaces - rooms for meeting in person as well as for conference calls. The focus on colorful team spaces is also a cost-effective strategy designed to maximize the impact of the renovation budget: individual work spaces are left more muted to be a deliberate contrast to highlight the importance of collaboration and teamwork.

The transition from the hallway into the team spaces receive special design attention. A quarter-circle sweep of the door marks the entrance to each team room as the floor color changes to toned carpet. Colorful fabric curtains also play an important role in the design of the team rooms. In each room, differently colored curtains create a soft plane of fabric along the corridor window and introduce acoustic dampening, potential privacy from the hall, and a soft domestic touch. By simply drawing the curtains, the users can transform the feeling of each team room.

At the center of the office is the cheerful communal kitchen. Here, all the employees come together – and all the colors come together. When you mix all colors of the meeting rooms you get gray, so a gray kitchen works as a neutral background for colorful chairs and colorful cabinet door handles. All the colors are brought together by the red lines of the steel table supports as well as the grout between the tiles.

A large room on another floor has been developed as a multi-function space and company canteen. In addition to the color concept coming together in this space, an existing ceiling has been transformed by a dense installation of Japanese paper lamps. An extra-long curtain can separate the kitchen space from the assembly space for big event events and conferences – or to just change the mood. Movable folding tables and stacking chairs can be rearranged to generate different scenarios - lunch breaks, skype meetings with other companies, game nights, lectures, all sorts of events.

Using bright colors, custom furniture, clever purchases and cost-effective transformations, Ester Bruzkus Architekten have enlivened, unified and updated the collaborative workspace for Futurice.

To help their potential clients envision modern high quality office space, the Becken Development Group asked Ester Bruzkus Architekten to plan and design the same office space for various kinds of tenant users. We developed different schemes with the same furniture components to optimize the flexibility, individuality and team spirit for different kinds of work styles.

Different plans accommodate those firms whose work involves mostly collaboration to those whose work process requires focused, concentrated individual work. Or, like many contemporary offices, a complex mix of all of these ways of working, together with kitchens, planned and spontaneous meeting spaces, relaxing social areas. The plan alternatives also demonstrate how a tenant could use an entire floor, or parts of any floor.

The designs represent our understanding of how contemporary work is done and how well-planned workspace can enhance a company’s effectiveness, reinforce employee satisfaction, and project the right image to new customers.

We developed a menu of architectural components where, with our guidance, each tenant can select the appropriate mix of interior design elements that is appropriate for their work process. There is a kit of parts for individual work, group work, social spaces and service spaces - each with a specific set of furniture components and work accessories.

The workspace at Neo also combines Ester Bruzkus Architekten’s extensive experience with hospitality design. These offices are designed with the sensibilities and service concept of a fine hotel - options for open kitchen blocks, hot-desking, and comfortable lounges.

Our own offices convert the space of a 19th century former chocolate factory in Berlin Mitte. Precise spatial and material interventions transform the industrial loft into effective work space by introducing a limited palette of solid and translucent materials. Two opaques “boxes” structure the main office space: the white box houses offices and meeting rooms; the black box conceals the restrooms and the server room. Polycarbonate panels define the kitchen, which is at the heart of the office. Very tall doors approach the vaulted ceilings.

The offices for an orthopedic and physiotherapy practice in Berlin’s Leipziger Platz recall the atmosphere of an elegant hotel lobby more than a waiting room in a doctor’s office.

The design results from a dialogue between volumes of distinct material identity. Visitors enter in the center of the space, where they are greeted by the reception desk - a polished cube of black stone. Behind the reception area is an expansive storage area, fronted by copper mesh sliding doors that contrast with the stone of the desk. To the left, a divider consisting of delicate copper tubing stretches between the high density concrete floor and the angled ceiling. The walls are and sliding doors are clad with vertical wooden slats so that they blend together into a rich material plane.

A central hallway runs between the cabins and leads to the treatment rooms, each of which are completely white. Each treatment room has a fully featured fitted medical work area, with Fenix smart nanotech surfacing. The opposite hallway is colored dark anthracite and features light installations from PSLab.

The elements of the new office design enclose the building’s structure without disturbing it, and feature bold, durable, and inexpensive materials.

A bright yellow coating transforms an existing stair and a wooden meeting room, wrapped in unfinished OSB, form the center of the new design. The edge of the meeting room has wide vertical wooden slats, providing some privacy but also connection with the rest of the space.

The upper floor houses the actual office space. Light metal framed custom-designed desks create airy workspaces. The kitchen area is the center of the upstairs area and features a long freestanding counter with seating, inviting communication between staff as they enjoy their food or as an informal meeting area. Near the kitchen area is a second staircase that doubles as a seating area that forms the centerpiece of weekly meetings, transforming circulation into an event space.

A wood framed Japanese tea-house style area with soft furnishings provides a more casual space for meeting or informal work.

The historic Knorr-Bremse factory in Berlin-Friedrichshain is transformed into a modern canteen and “fashion hub” for online retailer Zalando.

The fashion hub is a central event space that serves as an incubator for creative projects. Freestanding cubes made of different materials - aluminum, copper, tiling or polycarbonate sheeting - provide showcases for the dynamic presentation of new fashion collections. Bright neon lighting evokes the sense of an art gallery, while individual exhibits and points of interest have their own subtle accent lighting.

Seating in the canteen is constructed from inexpensive Oriented Strand Board (OSB) and contrasts with dark blue tile walls and the austere, industrial design of the host building to create both a warm and a cool atmosphere. On the courtyard terrace a large area of wooden decking and bright yellow garden huts extends the interior conversion to the outdoors, providing opportunities for parties and functions as well as for lunch and coffee.

Bruzkus Batek was commissioned to add a hotel and offices to an existing industrial structure in Moscow. The strategy involved introducing a set of lowered outdoor rooms to make sunken gardens which extend access and light to lower levels of the existing building.

Ahmet Bilir, Stuttgart hair stylist who frequently takes part in international haute couture fashion shows, has named his new salon “BILIR SALON PRIVÉ”. The small elegant salon conjures the character of a boudoir and creates a homey, intimate atmosphere.

Three neat steps lead from the street directly into the reception and waiting area, whose walls are clad with micro-fluted white panels, bringing historical stucco to mind. The adjacent salon with its four styling chairs is seen through two openings in the dividing wall. Beneath each mirror is a red marble console table on a brass pedestal. The furnishings were designed specifically for Ahmet Bilir’s salon. The differentiated lighting concept was developed for the salon by PSLab.

The so-called “colour laboratory” is located in a separate “box”, whose walls are fully clad with Persol mirrors. Thank to the shadow gaps around the circumference, the box is perceived as an independent modern element that stands in contrast to the existing building, while simultaneously reflecting it.

The main focus of this design is to create a space which doesn't reflect standards features of a dental practice.

The foyer welcomes patients with a special ambience: materials such as American walnut tree, Pietra Grey marble, bronze metallic surfaces and seamless industrial floors dominate. The purist style is defined by a clear and precise spatial structure. Structural elements seem detached from the ceiling and floor by use of partially backlit shadow gaps, giving the space a sense of lightness. Translucent entrances, recessed into niches, underline the structural aspect of the wood-panelled volumes, while letting light into the reception area.

The waiting area recalls a hotel lounge with its library, marble planter and furniture - dental treatments and implants are forgotten here. In the doctor’s office, medical equipment is concealed behind handleless cabinets from white Corian, flush with backlit wall panelling. Chestnut wall cladding ensures a calming environment that makes this dentist practice quite unconventional. Under soft light, against a chestnut wall, even the dentist chair appears non-threatening.