JOGAILA BUSINESS CENTRE
TYPOLOGY Office building
LOCATION Vilnius, Lithuania
SIZE 1600 sq.m
CLIENT Nter Asset Management
INVOLVEMENT Complete interior design project, Conversion, Art direction
STATUS Completed
VISUALIZATIONS Milena Šalčiūtė
TIMELINE 2022
A modern intervention at the
historic 'Hermis' bank building>>
The assignment was to adaptively re-design a former Hermis bank (later SEB) building built in 1996 to administrative use - a contemporary business centre for office rent. The authenticity of the building required many unique solutions in order to modernize the spaces and adapt them to the needs of nowadays user while preserving the building's historical heritage.
The building itself is situated in Jogaila 9a street, the very heart of Vilnius, and exclusive of its own postmodernism architecture. The layout of the building is 4 ground floors with a basement where the 4 vault facilities are buried - a total of 1,600m2 common space.
Based on our in-depth research, we recommended that the Client move to a more efficient, agile and collaborative way of working, and have introduced a diverse range of different workpoints to facilitate this, including touch-down benches, quiet private working lodgings for different tenants of the building, bookable conference space and vaults that we strategically transformed into different size meeting rooms.
Shifting the focus away from 'the desk', the tenants now have a choice of different workpoints, from the common atrium space on the first floor (with modular plywood benches), to quiet, private spaces to support concentration. These common space 'interactions' been strategically designed to encourage movement across the building, increasing chance of socializing between different work segments and contributing to the overall buzz. Hopefully, even creating new business opportunities between the tenants themselves.
The space has been completely transformed into a light, welcoming and modern workspace that fully reflects the building's rich history in every detail. The building is recognized as hereditary, hence original elements such as meringue alike stairs, granite flooring and Carrara marble walls have been preserved and seamlessly married with new interior design features such as stainless steel doors or continous illuminated light panel above the atrium resembling Kubrik's 'Space Oddysey'.
It is actually through different sources of light that we wanted to approach the refurbishment concept and modernize this 90tys child. Therefore various light elements became the main character of the building not only creating different mood scenarios but also actually fixing what was once a problematic issue – lack of light. Bespoke lighting fixtures such as suspended LED panel net in the conference room and vaults, column tubes in stainless steel frame, continous illuminated light panel above the atrium, colorful wall neon tubes in the kitchen, LED strips behind the decorative suspended ceiling – all creations of 'Anòther' team and produced by local artisans.
Off-white shades were also chosen selectively with the purpose to give a fresh facelift.
Our ambition has been to make Jogaila a bold, forward-thinking, authentic, multi-functional administrative building full of modern art and light installations. By respecting the history, we preserve it's legacy, but adapting for nowadays modern reuse and so by further developing the idea of postmodernism: not only architecturally but also conceptually.
