Design for life
A multiplex cinema is one place you can go to have fun after that. Those are the axioms anyway. The discipline of interior design, however, goes far in blurring all manner of distinctions that we hold to exist between work and rest, and even shopping and leisure.
Massive Design, a Warsaw-based corporate interior design and architectural consulting firm, won the Miami + Beach 2003 Bronze Medal for Commercial Interior Design earlier this month for the work it did on beer producer Grupa Żywiec's headquarters, which is based in Buiness Center Warszawskiej, developed by the Ghelamco Group. "The first thing you have to do," says Przemysław Stopa, Massive Design's founder and its chief architect and designer, "is understand the corporate culture." And it's clear from the design of the Grupa Żywiec offices that he has made every effort to do exactly that. Brewing imagery inserts itself into the most functional items of furniture, such as the reception desk, and there is even an in-house bar that serves as both a meeting point for staff and management and as a place to greet guests in a convivial atmosphere. The whole purpose of Grupa Żywiec, which is to make beer, perhaps lends itself too easily to the point made at the beginning of this article about work and relaxation coming together in the office, but there are undoubtedly plenty of brewers that believe the only home for their product is in a public bar or shop, not the workplace. Massive Design have thought differently and haven't done too badly out of it.
Broadway Malyan is a British-based firm of architects, special planners and interior designers, to name but a few of the professions they employ under one roof, that was recently awarded the contract to design the new Silver Screen cinema, which is due to take its place at the Wola Park shopping center in Warsaw. This is the second assignment it has undertaken for Silver Screen, after having already created the 'experience' of the same brand at the Targówek multiplex. Unlike office interior designers, whose job it is to enhance both the productivity and comfort of employees within an essentially restricted space, those dealing with leisure have to consider the dynamic flow of human traffic. Free time, after all, means going where you want to go. With Silver Screen, however, it means channeling this in the right direction.
The Silver Screen brand, which operates two other multi-screen cinemas in the capital - in the Europlex building on Puławska and in the Targówek - has set itself apart from its peers through its appeal to the discerning film-goer. This is why it has created sub-brands, such as 'World Coffee' and 'Silver Bar,' that allow for the all-purpose night-out: you can have a drink and discuss the film, both before and after you've seen it, and, it is hoped, not go anywhere else. There is also the elite Platinum Screen, where special treatment is accorded those paying to watch a film at a table served by waitresses. It is this, particularly, which dictates the design strategy of Broadway Malyan at the Wola Park complex.
"It is effectively a cinema within a cinema," says Paul Ayre, director of Broadway Malyan Polska. "It's a challenge to ensure there's a degree of isolation between the two types of cinema-goer and that the more expensive ticket rewards you with a more memorable experience." The Puławska and Łódź Silver Screens, however, weren't designed by Broadway Malyan, and Ayre explains the differences between those two 'experiences' and the one he and his team are about to introduce to Wola Park. Of the Platinum experience, he says: "At Puławska, you travel down with the other film goers until you get to the main cinema before being siphoned off into a separate reception area and private bar. In Łódź, you go behind the main screens and are then separated from them by a glass partition. At Wola, we're going to do something a little bit different: it'll be more club oriented, more related to the Silver Bar and have less of a lounge atmosphere. We'll strike a balance between the Platinum and regular screens."
'Balance' is also a key concept that will inform the cinema's relationship with Wola Park as a whole. At the Europlex building on Puławska, although Silver Screen is clearly presented by a large sign at the front, the entrance has less of an immediate presence and is "tucked into a corner," as Ayre puts it. This modest announcement of its existence to the outside world will be adopted at Wola Park, but perhaps, if anything, with even less attitude than exists at Europlex.
"There'll be integration of quite a strong brand in this [cinema] market into Wola Park, without being too noisy about it," says Ayre. "We're looking at how we can gently remind people [about Silver Screen] as they go through the door, without adopting an 'in-your-face' approach, which, for a brand like Silver Screen, might be counter-productive. Our client is aware of the need to rely on subliminal reminders, as well as overt advertising."
This careful 'integration' of the leisure and retail offers at a center forms a crucial part of Broadway Malyan's general strategy in mainland Europe, where it focuses on retail/leisure work far more than in its home, the UK, where it, sometimes controversially, designs residential and office buildings. The firm is currently working on two developments in Poland that will endeavour to cross the 'out-of-town' retail park concept with that of the more centrally-located shopping center. One of these will be near Łódź and the other close to Warsaw.
The retail park phenomenon has until now been dominated by large home appliance/DIY stores that attract families at the weekend. The Broadway Malyan approach to the two projects in Poland, will, however, attempt to attract a wider public by offering a 'lifestyle' oriented retail/leisure space. It has already, according to Ayre, achieved this at sites in Portugal. One such example is the Alvaláxia Family Entertainment Center, which exists beneath the Sporting Lisbon football stadium and is, in Paul Ayre's words, "a hybrid of cool space to hang out in," where the shopping/leisure dichotomy falls away.
In office interior design, it is the open plan/closed working space dilemma that invariably concentrates the minds of both clients and experts in the field. Whereas, in general, American corporations will opt for the open plan model and the Germans, for example, choose more sectioned office space, in Poland a designer will have to be up to creating both. There are, however, quite naturally, certain types of firms that will always adopt one or other of the styles regardless of country: a law firm's space, for example, will invariably consist of several offices averaging 12 square meters each.
An advocate of the open-plan model, Przemysław Stopa suggests that in Poland there is an aversion to it among some employees because of the communist era legacy: "In the past," he says, "open areas were designed so that a hundred employees were squeezed together. When you have this, without any support area, you create an unproductive environment. Open areas work beautifully, but they have to be designed in a humane way." By support area, he means "focus rooms, small offices of around seven to ten square meters concentrated around the core of the building, which can be used by employees at a certain time, to make confidential phone calls, for example." Crucial to this concept is also the common area or 'in-house club' where, as Stopa puts it, "people from different levels of the company can talk in a relaxed atmosphere," which the bar at the Grupa Żywiec HQ exemplifies.
"When you have a nicely designed open area, productivity increases," Stopa argues. Removing the partitions, he maintains, exposes employees to peer pressure to apply themselves to their work, rather than make personal phone calls and play computer games. "One firm that switched from separate offices to an open area told me that after one or two months working this way, it was quite unpopular, but several months later, productivity had increased."
He adds that one of his clients, the Swedish firm Ericsson, actually provided its employees with training some years ago so that they could adapt to the open working environment. Now, he says, if you go to one of its offices, the workers "are in quiet mode; they aren't discussing what they saw on TV last night and they go to the focus room to talk over any sensitive matters."
Striking a balance between thrift and well-being is, however, central to Massive Design's strategy. "The heart of the office is used for recreation," says Stopa of his Grupa Żywiec design, which, he is wont to claim, is less a 'home away from home,' but actually "better than home. Especially in Poland, where in the past we built [housing] blocks where no attention was paid to strategic design."
Massive Design, a Warsaw-based corporate interior design and architectural consulting firm, won the Miami + Beach 2003 Bronze Medal for Commercial Interior Design earlier this month for the work it did on beer producer Grupa Żywiec's headquarters, which is based in Buiness Center Warszawskiej, developed by the Ghelamco Group. "The first thing you have to do," says Przemysław Stopa, Massive Design's founder and its chief architect and designer, "is understand the corporate culture." And it's clear from the design of the Grupa Żywiec offices that he has made every effort to do exactly that. Brewing imagery inserts itself into the most functional items of furniture, such as the reception desk, and there is even an in-house bar that serves as both a meeting point for staff and management and as a place to greet guests in a convivial atmosphere. The whole purpose of Grupa Żywiec, which is to make beer, perhaps lends itself too easily to the point made at the beginning of this article about work and relaxation coming together in the office, but there are undoubtedly plenty of brewers that believe the only home for their product is in a public bar or shop, not the workplace. Massive Design have thought differently and haven't done too badly out of it.
Broadway Malyan is a British-based firm of architects, special planners and interior designers, to name but a few of the professions they employ under one roof, that was recently awarded the contract to design the new Silver Screen cinema, which is due to take its place at the Wola Park shopping center in Warsaw. This is the second assignment it has undertaken for Silver Screen, after having already created the 'experience' of the same brand at the Targówek multiplex. Unlike office interior designers, whose job it is to enhance both the productivity and comfort of employees within an essentially restricted space, those dealing with leisure have to consider the dynamic flow of human traffic. Free time, after all, means going where you want to go. With Silver Screen, however, it means channeling this in the right direction.
The Silver Screen brand, which operates two other multi-screen cinemas in the capital - in the Europlex building on Puławska and in the Targówek - has set itself apart from its peers through its appeal to the discerning film-goer. This is why it has created sub-brands, such as 'World Coffee' and 'Silver Bar,' that allow for the all-purpose night-out: you can have a drink and discuss the film, both before and after you've seen it, and, it is hoped, not go anywhere else. There is also the elite Platinum Screen, where special treatment is accorded those paying to watch a film at a table served by waitresses. It is this, particularly, which dictates the design strategy of Broadway Malyan at the Wola Park complex.
"It is effectively a cinema within a cinema," says Paul Ayre, director of Broadway Malyan Polska. "It's a challenge to ensure there's a degree of isolation between the two types of cinema-goer and that the more expensive ticket rewards you with a more memorable experience." The Puławska and Łódź Silver Screens, however, weren't designed by Broadway Malyan, and Ayre explains the differences between those two 'experiences' and the one he and his team are about to introduce to Wola Park. Of the Platinum experience, he says: "At Puławska, you travel down with the other film goers until you get to the main cinema before being siphoned off into a separate reception area and private bar. In Łódź, you go behind the main screens and are then separated from them by a glass partition. At Wola, we're going to do something a little bit different: it'll be more club oriented, more related to the Silver Bar and have less of a lounge atmosphere. We'll strike a balance between the Platinum and regular screens."
'Balance' is also a key concept that will inform the cinema's relationship with Wola Park as a whole. At the Europlex building on Puławska, although Silver Screen is clearly presented by a large sign at the front, the entrance has less of an immediate presence and is "tucked into a corner," as Ayre puts it. This modest announcement of its existence to the outside world will be adopted at Wola Park, but perhaps, if anything, with even less attitude than exists at Europlex.
"There'll be integration of quite a strong brand in this [cinema] market into Wola Park, without being too noisy about it," says Ayre. "We're looking at how we can gently remind people [about Silver Screen] as they go through the door, without adopting an 'in-your-face' approach, which, for a brand like Silver Screen, might be counter-productive. Our client is aware of the need to rely on subliminal reminders, as well as overt advertising."
This careful 'integration' of the leisure and retail offers at a center forms a crucial part of Broadway Malyan's general strategy in mainland Europe, where it focuses on retail/leisure work far more than in its home, the UK, where it, sometimes controversially, designs residential and office buildings. The firm is currently working on two developments in Poland that will endeavour to cross the 'out-of-town' retail park concept with that of the more centrally-located shopping center. One of these will be near Łódź and the other close to Warsaw.
The retail park phenomenon has until now been dominated by large home appliance/DIY stores that attract families at the weekend. The Broadway Malyan approach to the two projects in Poland, will, however, attempt to attract a wider public by offering a 'lifestyle' oriented retail/leisure space. It has already, according to Ayre, achieved this at sites in Portugal. One such example is the Alvaláxia Family Entertainment Center, which exists beneath the Sporting Lisbon football stadium and is, in Paul Ayre's words, "a hybrid of cool space to hang out in," where the shopping/leisure dichotomy falls away.
In office interior design, it is the open plan/closed working space dilemma that invariably concentrates the minds of both clients and experts in the field. Whereas, in general, American corporations will opt for the open plan model and the Germans, for example, choose more sectioned office space, in Poland a designer will have to be up to creating both. There are, however, quite naturally, certain types of firms that will always adopt one or other of the styles regardless of country: a law firm's space, for example, will invariably consist of several offices averaging 12 square meters each.
An advocate of the open-plan model, Przemysław Stopa suggests that in Poland there is an aversion to it among some employees because of the communist era legacy: "In the past," he says, "open areas were designed so that a hundred employees were squeezed together. When you have this, without any support area, you create an unproductive environment. Open areas work beautifully, but they have to be designed in a humane way." By support area, he means "focus rooms, small offices of around seven to ten square meters concentrated around the core of the building, which can be used by employees at a certain time, to make confidential phone calls, for example." Crucial to this concept is also the common area or 'in-house club' where, as Stopa puts it, "people from different levels of the company can talk in a relaxed atmosphere," which the bar at the Grupa Żywiec HQ exemplifies.
"When you have a nicely designed open area, productivity increases," Stopa argues. Removing the partitions, he maintains, exposes employees to peer pressure to apply themselves to their work, rather than make personal phone calls and play computer games. "One firm that switched from separate offices to an open area told me that after one or two months working this way, it was quite unpopular, but several months later, productivity had increased."
He adds that one of his clients, the Swedish firm Ericsson, actually provided its employees with training some years ago so that they could adapt to the open working environment. Now, he says, if you go to one of its offices, the workers "are in quiet mode; they aren't discussing what they saw on TV last night and they go to the focus room to talk over any sensitive matters."
Striking a balance between thrift and well-being is, however, central to Massive Design's strategy. "The heart of the office is used for recreation," says Stopa of his Grupa Żywiec design, which, he is wont to claim, is less a 'home away from home,' but actually "better than home. Especially in Poland, where in the past we built [housing] blocks where no attention was paid to strategic design."
