Duras
Located in a 150-year old mill building, this Asset Management Firm focuses its interest in the biotech industry. Taking cues from sciences, the office design reflects the duality of scientific inquiry: its logic and creativity, its rigor and chaos.
Concrete floors connote the hard clean surfaces of the laboratory and glass and steel give the office an industrial feel. Color plays an important part of the composition and is a reference to the color coding of laboratory materials. Oranges, blues and greens are used throughout.
The existing structure of the mill building is an unhidden presence in the exposed brick walls and skeleton of timber columns that march down the center of the office. This order is also reinforced by the cellular nature of the analysts' office that anchor the front wing. Their angled translucent walls alternating with transparent glass doors create intriguing glimpses into the offices for visitors while sharing daylight with the interior. Shaped slip-matched sycamore panels define an organic waiting area that contrasts with the underlying structural order. The opposing wall of the entry hall is skewed in relation to the building grid, to create a forced perspective that leads visitors towards the conference and operations area. A narrow blue light running the length of this space becomes a marker that knits the plan together. The wings intersect at a conference room glazed in entirely with both frosted and clear glass illuminated by colored light sources.