Broissin Toreo Offices / BROISSIN

Curated by Clara Ott

Interior Designers: Broissin
Area: 750 m²
Year: 2020
Photographs:Alexander D'La Roche
Manufacturers: JUNG, Actiu, Interface, Saint-Gobain, ATELIER, Automotik, Crista Curva, Dayso, Firenze, IACSA & Asociados, INCLASS, Iessa, JLS, L-Com, Lucineli, Nimbus Group, Organitec, Pisos Creativos, Puebla instalaciones, Sedus, +4Soprema, Tanmax, Tecnotaba, Ventex-4
Lead Architect: Gerardo Broissin, David Suarez

Text description provided by the architects. This post-pandemic corporate space is a reference of how regular work centres will gradually migrate to eventual collaborative centres where reunions for ‘team building’ will be scheduled and all other work will remain as ‘home office’. In BROISSIN Toreo all spaces are designed as controlled work cells, ventilated and regulated by an air quality meter. It is a corporate office 100% free from ‘hot desk’ type spaces or communal work stations, ensuring that physical contact between users will only be necessary between related teams and in autonomous zones with no more than 8 people at a time.

When we began planning our office the national corporate environment was mainly guided by a mixed scheme between open plan and private offices meant for directors, without putting aside that Covid-19 was still part of a television sci-fi sequel. We were already convinced of the insufficiency of the innovative solutions for the work space abilities in direct relation to the use of defined space. We then distinguish an office that from the analysis of its functions and necessities its ideal form would be born, and not one originated from preset schemes given by customs, but wanting of the ’necessity + occupant = space’ equation, but always enveloped in an ideology that made the spirit of the place homogeneous. Instead of one’s self being the source.

We are preceded by a suis generis office laid out in 5 floors with open collaboration spaces of 6 to 8 people, a condition that favored our performance by being organized in managing groups of 4 to 8 people. This way the day to day in the previous work centre seemed efficient and fluid. Not as much for days where individual concentration claimed its reign and crowd, despite its low amount (max. 8 in one space) it would not give, even a decibel.

Its been a few years since a fixed, assigned work place is no longer part of our working scheme, daily rotation of different work places would bring us freshness and motivation, when the space you had envisioned working in was available. As a counterpart you couldn’t always share the space with the people you supposed and the challenge of compatibility and empathy would bubble up. Which is a situation that is mitigated during the first work week in offices with assigned places like it happens during the first days off school, here with flexible places it will take up to 6 weeks or a couple more to match with all the possibilities until you can consider everyone s aa part of the same clan, when that moment arrives, the hegemony of the pack has been reached. We then designed an app that allows each professional to choose his or her work place each day ensuring to a great extent the most profitable coexistence in the strict sense of individual productivity.

In search of the duality between exterior and inteiror in a forcibly interior space. The most significant sample of corporate buildings in the country lacks exterior spaces, only a couple of floors in skyscraper buildings of 30 to 50 levels in Mexico City have terraces or allow the user to open windows. The majority have curtain walls that impede the manipulation of the interior environment with direct exterior ventilation. Our floor in ‘Parque Toreo’ is not the exception. That is why we thought up an office that although contained in one of these representative floors, would give the sensation of walking through an exterior space and enter an interior one each time you entered or exited a collaborative space. We created a mini controlled ecosystem that groups species with high CO2, formaldehyde catchment capacity, among others, that contribute to a low ppm value in the air. We are under 550 ppm of CO2 during the most critical moments, when the average of this value in most corporate offices is within the 800 ppm to 1000 ppm range.

In circulations and casual meeting areas lighting is a reflection of the exterior, and keeps diminishing as the day goes on, procuring the natural course of the circadian rhythm of all the users. An urban farm and hydroponic shelves make up the central park area, offering the office a sense of sustainability, energy and life.