As a result of extension of structures and adding new business units, the company needed to rent new space in Business Center Avrora in Moscow. A new Yandex office is an area to share knowledge and generate new ideas. It's an example which shows how physical alterations on a workplace can support business objectives of a company and improve user experience of staff members.

Moscow

1 000 m²

Project Status

Finished

Total Area

Location

// About the project

Island podium for conferences is mainly used for lectures and hands-on training. A refectory table is used for corporate parties. Behind-the-scenes communication takes place on soft sofas. Moreover, a bar counter satisfies the needs of all the introverts in retreat.

Next to a big kitchen and smaller floor-specific coffee points on the individual basis they allocated closed rooms with exclusive access. They are so-called "rooms of a kind hostess". They serve for events catering and also for keeping strategic stocks of coffee, tea and different yammies.

// Space arrangement

Open space is divided for equal-volume zones of a comfortable capacity. Traffic zones on a compositional level are divided by furniture groups and blocks of check-room elements. A number of workplaces at one bench is no more than four. It's made for the staff members' comfort as extra-long desks are seen as a trite call-center where people's opinion is usually neglected. It takes a toll on the level of engagement rate and staff members effectiveness.

Fitness Block includes:
• a hall of weight machines
• yoga center
• a room to play ping pong
• locker room with individual shower cubicles

Nearby there is a mother-and-child room. For the room they designed a special guide, in which the outfit and significant details of the room are described in detail.

// Design idea

60% of people are visual learners. For them visual information processing is a dominant one. It's about form, positioning, colour. It's difficult to explain to such people the existence of some things without a spectacular example.

The basement of the approach is a provision of new user stories for Yandex staff members. People have their crusted habits and often focus on personal methods of intercommunion and work, using a present-day pattern. Business challenges of tomorrow form different workflow and space for supporting innovative approaches. Our hands-on approach educates people in new forms of work and which work processes they hold up.

There is a simple example. During the primary acquaintance and excursion to the existing office we discovered that some staff members tend to have lunch at their workplaces. Some coffee machines and mini-fridges were scattered over the departments through the whole floor. It didn't contribute much to the cooperation culture among the departments. People didn't communicate.

In a new design conception we placed special emphasis on an interlocked sitting area, connected with the kitchen to help forward rencontres and communications, which could lead to build new relations and generate ideas in the work environment.

A coloristic redecoration concept has a neutral base. A grey-black mood of an in-flight office interspersed with wooden furniture gets broken by gently bright communication zones. A special attention is paid to acoustics of the rooms and their visual diversity.

A huge percentage of walls has a special magnetic marker surface that is quite often demanded in IT company offices.