An Advertising Agency Can Be the Best Form of Advertising. Showing How to Work and Welcome Clients.

The concept is immediately apparent in the entrance area, which is clearly visible from the stairway through a broad glass frontage. An elegant and stylish counter carrying the agency logo marks the official reception area. Facing it is an inviting lounge area, which doubles up as an event location with an open fireplace, sofa and capacious armchairs – and table football. The agency thus reveals its intimate living space in juxtaposition to its professional habitus, thereby dispensing with the need for ceremony and signalling a close personal relationship to its clients.

The reception affords an unrestricted view of the work area. This area is located on a raised podium covered with needle felt and is delimited by the freestanding supports of the original factory building and the acoustic ceiling striated with white foam lamellae. The area is divided into three zones with six workspaces in each. The division is effected by glossy, cream-coloured room dividers. These appear to float in space, creating sufficient intimacy in the individual units without hampering informal exchange between neighbouring areas. This zoning is underscored by the lighting, which is mounted in two long, black beams suspended above the workspaces, providing both direct and indirect light and creating the ideal lighting situation for concentrated creativity.

The space between the entrance area and work area houses a secluded office, which backs on to the archive. A more focused mood prevails within its walls – as required by copywriters working against a deadline – without the room being shut away completely from agency life. The walls here and throughout the agency are deconstructed by means of an almost theatrical façade, composed of different layers of solid wall, transparent façade, mirrored area and superimposed, perforated MDF panels. The transparent elements consist of panels of plastic honeycomb Bencore, contained within narrow, white-stained pine frames. These façades appear translucent when passing by or looking at them from an angle, yet they allow a clear view into the room when you stand right in front of them. The dark brown-stained MDF panels are both façade themselves and superimposed in front of it to create a multiple layering effect. The perforation is specially designed to improve the acoustics of the space. The entire system enables the confines of the space to be seamlessly varied according to your acoustic and visual needs.

The visitor is guided from the reception area along an aisle marked by a lighting strip made up of 40 diagonally suspended, linear luminaires. The aisle leads past the main conference room, on past the sanitary facilities and the open library into the back area of the agency.

The offices of the two managing directors give on to the main work area. They are connected with the latter by large, transparent, cantilever doors. Their transparency allows the directors to take an active part in agency life, as well as effect a discrete withdrawal. The offices are interconnected by a door and each is equipped with its own mini conference island. The floors are laid out with the same deep-pile carpet that is used in the copywriters’ office and the conference room.

The recreation room is located directly opposite. Functioning as an integral part of agency life, this is not a closed-off space and resembles more an open-plan kitchen than a staff room. Its main features are the band of kitchen units running along the length of the rear wall and a large, oval table with 14 chairs. A circular mirror is affixed to the ceiling above. Beneath this floats a cloud of lights, which gives the room its cosy feel. The kitchen units can be concealed behind a large curtain, thereby transforming this space into a large conference room for many participants. The superb quality of its individual elements creates a sufficiently representative context in which to hold meetings with external participants without relinquishing the personal note. By not withholding this intimate space from its clients, the agency once again underscores the strong element of trust in its client relations.

The agency is delimited by the transition to the neighbouring building section, which contains a small thinking cell. This seating island is located at maximum distance from the bustle of the agency and rounds off the spectrum of very different conference situations: from the fireplace discussion, to the standing conference, to the »round table«, to the discrete interview within the managing directors’ offices. Work space and communication areas alternate throughout the agency. In so doing, the agency does not fit any formal model. The layering of the rooms, furniture units and mirrors creates many fascinating perspectives and overlapping effects from different vantage points. As a result, the agency resembles a landscape rather than a fixed space, offering multiple opportunities for creativity at different moments, instead of simply a space that contains desks.