GI used bright colours, designer chairs, and grafitti on the walls to put this new office space for the Russian equivilent of Facebook at the front of its game

Details

Client: VKontakte
Design: Gullsten-Inkinen Design and Architecture (GI)
Size: 885 sq m
Completion time: Eight months

Project Details

Social networking site Vkontakte is Russia’s answer to Facebook and is also popular in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus. The company recently moved its St Petersburg office to the seventh and eighth floors of a newly renovated office block in the city’s business district, and rather than going with a local designer it chose Finnish practice Gullsten-Inkinen Design and Architecture – known as GI for short – to design the interior.

Founded in 1988 by husband-and wife-team Jari Inkinen and Hanna Gullstén, GI had been looking to establish itself in Russia for some time and had already designed an office for mobile phone company Nokia in Moscow; but as Inkinen explains, building a reputation in the country takes time. ‘In Russia things are a little bit different to Europe,’ he says. ‘Relationships are very important and it can be difficult to find people who will work with you; but once you do they will be very solicitous.’

Like Facebook, Vkontakte is a young business with most of its employees aged 35 or younger and, says Gullstén, it was very open to ideas when it came to the design of the new office space. ‘What they wanted was a really informal workplace where they could throw big parties, rather than a traditional office. Other than that they gave us quite a free hand.’

GI decided on an edgy, urban design concept. ‘We wanted to create something like an industrial warehouse,’ says Inkinen, who commissioned St Petersburg street artist Alex Trunov (aka Trun) to add graffiti to some of the walls. Elsewhere, brickwork has been exposed to make the space feel less corporate. Ceiling works have also been exposed throughout much of the space, while blown-up and rasterised images of faces applied to walls relate naturally to the profile pictures of users on the Vkontakte website. A ping-pong table forms the centrepiece to the office break-out area, helping to create the party atmosphere the client asked for.

Perhaps the most successful area of the scheme is the light-filled reception space where staff entertain clients. Here, a simple but effective scheme includes two Aarnio Eero Bubble Chairs. Hung by chains from ceiling, they give spectacular views over the rooftops of St Petersburg. White chair cushions and a bubble-shaped section of blue carpet reflect the company’s corporate colours.

Much of the furniture comes from the design practice’s native Finland and includes Kilta chairs by Martela. ‘In terms of ergonomics Finland has the edge on the rest of Europe,’ says Inkinen.

The designers also say they have used more bright colours than they would have for projects back home. ‘We live half our lives in snow so, to us, white is colour. But in this project the client wanted more colour than you find in most Nordic or Scandinavian design,’ says Inkinen.

Walls have been painted with bright colours as a foil to the darker treatments such as the graffiti and exposed brickwork. Much of the office is open plan, but awkwardly shaped floor plates mean that smaller rooms around its periphery get very little natural light. To make them feel brighter the design team had them painted in bold primary colours, including red, green and blue.

In the competitive market of social networking Vkontakte is out to attract the very best people to work with it, so the design of this new office space had to be eye-catching. ‘The client wasn’t afraid of the bold use of colours we suggested,’ says Gullstén, ‘and in the end it is extremely happy and proud of the project.’

This article was first published in fx Magazine.

Photo credit: Juri Molodkovets