UFO Space
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Local: Canoas/RS
Área total: 600m²
Arquitetura: Corporativo/Comercial
Ano: 2018
Fotografias: Marcelo Donadussi
Prêmios: People Choice Awards 2019 FRAME MAGAZINE
1º lugar categoria Comercial/Corporativo VISUAL & DESIGN 2019
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We find ourselves today in a situation where everything is changing at a rate we’ve never seen before. In those moments architecture somehow has to dare making a difference, even breaking the rules. What we needed to start the project was a new surprising approach of a concept, we were looking for something out of this world. We’ve tried to discover new things, explored new possibilities. This project should be anything but... conventional. Inspired by the brand’s extraterrestrial name and the idea of freely diving into the unknown, we’ve got it. And we call it UFO Space.
The UFO Space is a multifunctional space located in Canoas/RS, and it is ran by EXO Collaborative Intelligence. Designed to be an entrepreneurial platform, it aims at gathering different minds in a single environment of collective intelligence, allowing to boost the creation and development of upcoming business. Taking inspiration from European environments of co-working and innovation, it shows the predominance of Swedish and Scandinavian architecture, searching for what is yet unknown (thusly represented by UFO). Its intention is to abduct people, companies or events in a regular or seasonal basis.
We know that design of the environment aligned with the needs of the people who would inhabit it could get a higher productivity and a higher business connection. The project revolves around transforming the working space into an arena of mutual collaboration that manifests not just a catalyst, but as inspirational source for interpersonal relations, allowing different interaction with the space they co-inhabit. It sets off with the Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) premise.
Being UFO Space’s pilot project, the first unit of UFO Store was designed with resembling characteristics regarding matters of functionality, conceptuality and physical contexts. Through simplicity and clearity we’ve built it. Functionality, innovation and creativity were the keywords to build something that is out of this world. It is possible to observe the projects’ unifying and structuring elements in its façade, built in gabion walls, made of metallic modules with “floating rocks”. This curtain of steel and stone, being one great and unique element that resumes the project’s both form and function, unfolds throughout the space’s length, separating meeting rooms and individual offices from the shared spaces, such as the café, working stations and stands. Moreover, exposition panels, compact working stations and lockers can be found through the space.
In order to bring both the environment and the UFO concept together, we distributed the stones in the gabion walls in a way that would capture the sense of outer space, naming them Antigravitational Stones. Furthermore, circular lamps were shifted and rotated to create the ambience of unidentified flying objects on the working space’s ceiling.
On the walls opposed to the offices there is another metal structure forged similarly to the central one, although without the stones or the metallic mesh involving them, working as an exposition panel for diverse products. On the way up to the mezzanine, beside the stands, there are sitting spaces for studies, rooms for brief brainstorming meetings, as well as an environment for decompression and reading, which offers a mesh bed, attached to the metal beams of the mezzanine’s structure.
The use of wood and steel displays the simplified and minimalist character of the environment, making use of raw, unaltered industrial materials, allied to the latest developments in commercial automation, as well as the intergalactic theme embedded to the UFO brand, that aims to decode and power the never-ending human search for undiscovered technologies, promoting social and collaborative interactions that form an exclusive workplace.
And more than ever the influence of the working environment has emerged: the atmosphere constructed can be seen throughout the images, where rocks, light and space collide in the architectural experience.
