office design Archives - LIVING ASEAN - Inspiring Tropical Lifestyle //

/ Bangkok, Thailand /

/ Story: Kor Lordkam / English version: Bob Pitakwong /

/ Photographs: Nantiya, Weerawat Sonriang /

It all started with a 30-year-old, three-story townhouse and a company of architects Studio Miti in need of a new home. Like a fortunate stroke of serendipity, they found exactly what they had been searching for, a building with a wide, six-meter frontage abutting the street, an architectural quality attribute that gave it a decided plus.

The new building facade consisting of lightweight concrete blocks in slate gray is built of a framework of iron securely anchored to the original supporting structure of concrete masonry construction. The building’s principal face can open and shut as needed to regulate the amounts of natural daylight and fresh outdoor air streaming into the rooms. More than anything else, it’s design that meets engineering standard requirements and specifications for safety and durability.

Needless to say, it’s hard to find anything like it nowadays. More importantly, it’s located in an easily accessible community area with a variety of amenities, eating places and businesses serving surrounding populations.

Studio Miti management obviously saw the potential of it developing to future success. And that’s what gave them the inspiration going forward. They set off without delay to breathe new life into the old townhouse, transforming it into a modern design atelier that’s the home of the company’s finest 20-strong staff.

Their secrets lay in creating an exciting new external envelope covered with lightweight concrete materials. And the result of all this is a pleasing visual appearance unlike anything out there. Architecturally speaking, it’s an interesting amalgam of color, texture and the perception of shape and size that inspires admiration.

studio miti office bangkok — A set of wooden steps rises past a trough where leafy plants grow leading to the reception room on the ground floor.

Ground floor interiors afford comfortable workspaces designed to boost productivity, with communal facilities such as small meeting rooms and client reception areas neatly arranged throughout the building. There’s also a casual dining area with a kitchen and pantry, not to mention recreational spaces with a ping-pong table and quiet nooks to chill out.

Taken as a whole, it’s design that speaks volumes for the company’s operating principles — investing in a conducive work environment so as to reduce stress and improve concentration. Likewise, it makes perfect sense to ensure its design team can stay focused on the task at hand.

With the folding glass door system stowed away, the ground floor serving multiple functions as a meeting room, storage room and recreational area instantly transforms into one big open space.

Climb a flight of stairs, and you come to the main meeting room reserved for formal meetings or when work needs total concentration. There’s a customer reception area nearby that makes a great first impression, with facilities for online video conferencing, a dining room and areas used for recreation.

Different from what’s usual is the building façade that can open and shut as needed to regulate the amounts of natural light during the daytime or admit fresh outdoor air into the room in the late afternoon, a clever hack to save big on energy bills.

The stairway leading to workspaces on the upper floors remained where the old, tired looking stairs had been prior to renovation, only slightly altered to give it a look that belongs to the present.

The third floor holds ample workspaces with a mezzanine just below the high-pitch roof. Together they boast the comfort of a high-ceilinged room made light and airy by design. For lack of a better word, it’s the pride and joy of some 20 staff members working here as a team.

Of all parts of the building, the roof received the most extensive renovation. To get where they wanted to be, the architects had the old roof torn down to make room for a new high-pitch upper covering.

This gave the interiors much more space overhead, more natural light and aesthetic appeal. Plus, new ceilings built flush with the underside of the roof add real character to the room, while the mezzanine provides extra storage space just below the roof.

All things considered, it’s about creating a workspace that bodes well for the good health of all members on the team, while inspiring productivity and job satisfaction. These qualities can only come from having access to a conducive work environment, the ability to stay focused on work and freedom from noise and distractions.

To achieve the desired results, all the workspaces and functional areas are warmly cocooned inside a solid external envelope made of lightweight concrete materials. Yet they feel connected to the elements of nature, thanks in part to large openings in the front façade that let natural light and fresh air stream into the rooms on the second and third floors.

An opening in the mezzanine reinforced by a steel I-beam system provides visual continuity from above and below.

Not only that, all the arrangements in place also allow the architects to experiment with exciting ideas and innovative materials never before seen, among them a new kind of lightweight concrete materials for wall construction.

The building exterior showcases the ridges and grooves in concrete blocks cut open and left exposed to the weather, thereby allowing time to leave its imprint.

In Studio Miti ‘s most recent experiment, they decided out of curiosity to split an ultralight concrete block in half, only to discover that it contained ridges and grooves on the inside creating light and shadows. They then proceeded with installing the ultralight blocks inside out, thereby showcasing the beauty of imperfections of materials on the building’s exteriors.

It’s sort of going in the opposite way of what usually happens.

The result is charm, good looks without embellishments or decoration of any kind, one that creates an interesting light and shadow play when touched by light. Plus, it’s a spectacular sight that changes with the time of day.

In the fewest possible words, it’s a renovation that conveys a great deal about Studio Miti ’s belief, which says that, first and foremost, it makes a lot of sense to be material savvy. Better yet, it’s prudent to investigate the material before using it. Why? Because knowledge of materials and how they perform in real situations is essential to creating architecture.

A side-elevation view of Studio Miti’s new home shows the exteriors adorned with lightweight blocks in slate gray, a feature that gives it distinctive character.

Studio Miti Bangkok — With the façade closed, the building looks perfectly solid, transforming Studio Miti’s new home into a piece of architecture in a class of itself.

Architect: Studio Miti (www.studiomiti.com)

You may also like…

Ngói Space: A Community Center in Vibrant Orange Graces a Suburb of Hanoi

Urban Farming Office: VTN Architects’ Office Gives Back Lush Greenery

A beautiful office can be an important element in inspiring good work. Here we give you five examples of exciting and creative office design in Bangkok.

/// Thailand ///

– Rabbit Digital Group –

An old aluminum warehouse on Banthat Thong Road now has a new and different look: its 1500 square meters of interior space now houses the chic new office layout of the Rabbit Digital Group. About 60 percent of the common area inside is reserved for a skateboard yard, ping-pong tables, snooker, a pantry, and a big communal table which can be used either for lunchtime celebrations or for brainstorming sessions where cool ideas are dreamed up, but that’s not all: everyone walking in to work passes through the chic industrial charm of this common area, and just experiencing the design is enough to unconsciously promote creative thinking. The building’s structural lines are painted black and offset by furnishings made of bright new materials: a steel stair, stainless steel slide, and natural rubber tree wood surfaces, in an open “doublespace” setting whose relaxed feeling is reinforced by living trees. It’s easy to forget this is an office!

– Charcoal Design –

When its old office could no longer provide needed functionality for the increasing numbers of people using it, Charcoal Design decided to relocate and renovate a 30-year-old house on a 400-square-meter property as its new workspace. Existing rooms were torn out and replaced with a spacious area that provided not only functional support for work teams, architects, interior designers, and graphic designers, but also convenient private work areas, and with enough space to accommodate a larger workforce in the future. Huge cement beams above the spacious, airy work hall reach out alongside a walkway that connects to a meeting room centered around the same glass table Company executives used in the former office. The atmosphere here is designed for the kind of ambience you might find in a bar or coffee shop, with greenery to relax the eyes.

– V Office –

The old place was just a studio, but now you’ll find V Office – of the VCAN group of companies – a workplace remarkable not only for its form inside and out, but for its unique and unforgettable character. This 5-storey building with a total space of 1,321 square meters took 3-4 months to design, and nearly a year to build. Completely redone, nothing was left of the old appearance. Now it’s open and uncluttered, with surfaces of brick and unfinished cement. The building façade features three-dimensional repetitions of the “V” motif in copper-colored aluminum composite attached to the steel building structure, creating beautiful patterns that work both to screen the sunlight and to give privacy, while giving the building its memorable standout look.

– Baiyah Studio –

This small architectural company built its office on a 60-square-meter property with a budget of just 800,000 baht and design and construction together taking only 5 months. The primary design requirement was to reduce electrical use, so the architects took maximum advantage of natural light and ventilation. To limit dependence on air conditioning systems, circulation within the building was designed to run generally through every space and room, so heat would be released rather than trapped. There are many strategies to protect against heat entry into a building, and architects took into consideration which times different sections received more or less use, positioning bathrooms, kitchen, and reception hall as a buffer toward the west, which gets the most heat in the afternoon, to keep office areas cool and comfortable during the day. Outside, a vertical garden covers the walls, acting as natural heat insulation.

– Designqua –

Am old 5-storey Sukhumvit area row building dating back to the 1980s with double arches in front and 600 square meters of usable space has become a charming example of architectural design. Behind a unique façade long familiar to the locals, a new office hides some incredibly charming design work, the brainchild of Malina Palasthira, a talented architect with the Designqua company. Looking for a site near a SkyTrain station where work could be done for a reasonable budget while still having enough space for herself and the 8-person design team, she found this place. To make it economical, some of the space was transformed into two differently styled Airbnb rooms to accommodate intercontinental travelers. The building owner wanted to keep the “retro” building façade, but much of the cramped inside was converted into a spacious, open office. Inside is a “flying table” work desk 8.3 meters long and designed to appear as if floating in the middle of the room. Working utility systems are intentionally exposed, for an open look which shows the beauty inherent in the systems themselves.

Blog : office design

Studio Miti Office: A Townhouse Tastefully Renovated as Design Studio Showcasing Material Savvy

Inspirational Office Design Ideas

A beautiful office can be an important element in inspiring good work. Here we give you five examples of exciting and creative office design in Bangkok.

– Rabbit Digital Group –

– Charcoal Design –

– V Office –

– Baiyah Studio –

– Designqua –

SITE MAP

CONTACT US

Address

Email

Phone / Fax

Contact us to report issues or complaints.