ProRelo Office (SVK)

A puristically designed office space with a low carbon footprint. The use of second-hand furniture allowed the budget to focus on overall employee comfort and well-being, including custom-made acoustic panels in pastel colors.

The client’s brief was to renovate a space in a building from the second half of the 20th century, located in the wider center of Bratislava, on Svätoplukova Street.

The first step in designing the ProRelo office interior was a purist approach to historical construction layers. The space was stripped down to its original construction, which ultimately became an integral and aesthetic part of the design.

Building on this base with exposed technological elements, we added a functional layout created in close collaboration between the architect and the client. The final layout was preceded by three overall conceptual variants and many derivatives to achieve the most suitable solution.

The final spatial layout consists of a public zone (entrance/reception, large and small meeting rooms, CEO’s office) and a three-aisle open space workspace, divided by a block housing the document archive, kitchen, and phone booth.

Our focus was on creating a bright, airy interior with a palette of muted colors, which, in combination with surface textures, creates a user-friendly environment. In addition to clean and direct lines, we worked with the motif of circles and their segments, which flow continuously throughout the space.

Reuse and Recycle
Several elements of the interior were integrated from the client’s previous office, while the desks are older but fully functional furniture purchased at a symbolic price. Choosing locally sourced elements helped us partially reduce the carbon footprint during the interior fit-out. We further complemented the interior with significant pieces from the SEDUS brand, which produces exclusively within the EU. This furniture emphasized the overall aesthetic and functional solution.

Importantly, we focused on creating an interior that embodies sustainability and acoustic comfort. Acoustic comfort was achieved through the integration of acoustic materials into custom-made furniture and their application on the walls. Additionally, as a by-product of our efforts, we created the proprietary design of variable acoustic elements under the ACOUsee brand. These are hanging disks that we decided to consolidate under our own design label.

A key part of the ProRelo interior is greenery, which is present throughout all zones of the space. It contributes to the overall design concept of interior "bays," which, despite the combination of open space and limited spatial possibilities, create coherent, more intimate cells. This results in greater user comfort within the office space.

At AT26 architects, we believe that by combining all the above-mentioned design approaches and elements, we have succeeded in creating a high-quality working environment that motivates its users. At the same time, we believe our design offers a user-friendly result. Feedback from the client and visitors to the ProRelo office so far supports this conclusion.