Offices in Vennes, LausanneOscar Maradiaga

Atelier Valerio Olgiati

Offices in Vennes, Lausanne CHDiploma project with Atelier Valerio Olgiati

Year: 2009Total Footprint Area: 12, 230.4 m2 (131,646 s.f.)Total Floorspace Area: 50,921.6 m2 (548,115 s.f)Total Usable Area: 48,490.4 m2 (521,942 s.f.)Workspaces Proposed: 2,432Parking Spaces: 466

Primarily, the concept is to work in and between the existing, natural landscape.

The offices are conceived as a thin envelope enclosing a vast open space. Inside and outside are blurred by the thinness of the building and the exterior space surrounding the complex. The structure is expressed architectonically with its most abstract means: horizontal floor plates supported by vertical columns in the center. To represent each office identity more precisely, each one forms a perfect square in plan. The square ‘rings’ intersect one another forming different sized courtyards within the larger whole of the complex. The aim is to create as many different proportions of outside space using each office ring as a module. Each ring descends down the terrain by one floor level creating a series of plateaus in the topography; underneath each plateau, garage and archive spaces are located.

The intersection of the rings also forms the part of the building in which meeting rooms are located. Each office is generally composed as a 6.8 meter wide corridor containing open plan offices. As one office intersects another, a disruption occurs in the plan of the open space corridors. One office yields to the other in alternating levels. This means that the continuous band of open plan offices occur on the odd levels (1,3), while meeting rooms cut out from the ring of the other office occur on the second level; the ground floor contains the entrance lobby and wireless lounge areas. While circulating from a desk inside the open plan corridors to the meeting rooms above or below, one perceives a variety of different sized courtyards. The intersection also creates an ambiguity between the boundary of one office identity to another.

The office complex thus becomes a space with no hierarchy, interwoven between the landscape and the offices themselves.

Existing Terrain Terrain with even gradient

Terrain adjusted to complex Terrain with buildings

Office Composition within Terrain

Office Composition Outside Spaces

Office Intersection