The main idea behind AME, the first concept by Wesh for a business incubator, is to re-create a small world where different companies can develop themselves and get bigger, with all services provided. The design questions the future of small companies in the periphery of the city for the next 20 years. How can a building enable many companies, each having their own singularity and size, to get along together and evolve? AME is all about wrapping plenty of entities into a bioclimatic greenhouse. For a monthly subscription, each company has its own space, which can be extended or reduced thanks to the company development. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The design allows companies to share services, such as a print room, kitchen, meeting room, reception and so on. This creates an ever friendly environment for everyone to work outside all year long. As a result, a new kind of nature is born.
In the interior, the space is split into a common space and a forest. The common spaces carve the greenhouse in order to create signal from the outside. It’s also a circulation node, which groups all the facilities that can be shared into one big entity.
AME adapts its configuration in order to be as close as possible to the users’ needs, offering from a simple desk to plenty of offices, meeting rooms, and so on.
Architects: Wesh
Location: Angers, France
Team: Robinson Neuville, Clément Maitre, Baptiste Blot
Client: Private
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- Courtesy of Wesh
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- Courtesy of Wesh
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- Courtesy of Wesh
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- Courtesy of Wesh
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- Courtesy of Wesh
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- Courtesy of Wesh
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A noble cause. I’ve always believed that using architecture to foster and cultivate other’s creativity, especially in re-thinking business models for other industries, is an underutilized typology. No one, however, has really leveraged design programming for business incubators that could really illustrate how a profitable model could be built. Most of these incubators are either financed by government or municipal funds (usually dried up, unless otherwise specifically comissioned) or require good choices made over many years to justify the costs of investment. Not your typical property ROI, in my opinion