Lighting in Design February-March 2018

An award-winning African workspace

T he design project for RCL Foods inWestside Office Park in Durban – a beautifully-designed 12 000 m 2 head office building which will be the hub of its operations in South Africa – is a merger of five individual companies to form RCL Foods. Working closely with the client team, the architects, developer and branding agency, Novo- space, acted collaboratively to create a new busi- ness culture identity reflected in the interior design. The building, arranged over four levels of offices, focuses on a dramatic central atrium, the ‘heart’ of the building, to which all workspace, meeting spaces and food functions integrally relate. The brief revolved around generating a work environment focused on people. RCL Foods was emphatic that the environment foster a sense of unity; defining a new culture with the creation of energetic and creative spaces, with chance inter- actions. The programme called for the integration of test and development kitchens, a public food

shop, cafés, a skybar, canteens and numerous touchdown and breakout areas. This was under- scored by the requirement to provide an efficient and flexible work space, with the overriding inten- tion to facilitate an office designed to attract and retain talent and personnel. All the spaces above were designed around the atrium, to generate a collaborative working environment. RCL Foods wanted to create an office build- ing that differentiated it from its competition and became a destination for clients and staff. After extensive research of various corporates in a simi- lar field, Novospace developed two concepts for consideration: the first being ‘edgy modern’ and the second, ‘funky raw’. Research showed that while competing cor- porates enjoyed remarkable spaces, ‘vanilla’ and 'familiar' were the overriding threads. ‘Vanilla’ cor- porate outcomes are singularly prevalent and this point of departure was adopted to create a unique,

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LiD FEB/MAR 2018