-
Architects: ENORME Studio
-
Photographs:Javier de Paz García
-
Manufacturers: Tecnografica, iGuzzini, 41zero42, Caamaño, Finsa, Frit jurgens, HAY, Mutina, Norman Copenhague, Vescom
Text description provided by the architects. The world seems to have changed a lot since we started the project of this office space until it has finally come to light, with pandemic included in the middle of the building proc. However, all our inicial ideas prove us once again that thinking about spaces in terms of flexibility permit projects to be reborn stronger than before.
Xeito investments, a Family Office of the Mahía Solís family, co-founders of the CAAMAÑO group, is a company orientated towards investing in industrial businesses and sustainable movement. With its Galician DNA but an international projection, their work philosophy is to do things “with xeito”, which in Galician means doing things with a combination of knack, style and class. The Xeito team gets in touch with us to shape a multifunctional space with capability to evolve with time but at the same time be an office, project showroom and a space to exchange ideas and events in the heart of the city of Madrid with views of the Retiro park.
This is why the heart of the project revolves around a circle, a complete viewing angle of 360º, a central meeting point that articulates the space and also welcomes future visitors. Xeito is a meeting place that is transparent, open and dynamic, linked to projects that support innovation applied to the improvement of people’s wellness in living, work or comercial spaces. Around the central circle different projects and gradients, from the most collective activities to the most individual, concatenate and sometimes overlap.
The individual workspace is situated in the first level, in which the arch of the circle offers the possibility to have a clean vision of the space without the interference of other people, to try to achieve the greatest level of concentration without the need of creating separated spaces while assuring the safety distance needed in these times. Next we find the auditorium for presentations of informal projects, a library and a central space with can be used for conferences, exhibitions, events and presentations. The closed spaces are reduced to the minimum, like the isolated telephone booth, designed in glass to be always visible or the meeting rooms, one more formal and representative, presided over by a misty Galician forest and a smaller dynamic one that incorporates into the common space with a system of sliding doors.
All of the open areas articulate with a double curtain system, each presenting a different gradient of transparency and opacity that enables the space to be configured for up to 10 different situations: when completely shut creating a blue cylinder that hides a model in its interior or closing only te first half of the perimeter separating the concentration zones from the more public ones.
The complete office uses partitions with pivoting and folding doors that can create, if necessary, a continuos room contemplating the 100% of the surface of the office as one sole space for celebrations for bigger crowds. The materials, furniture and systems chosen all have the same common criteria: sustainability, design and durability.
The main objective of the project is on one hand reinforcing the awareness of the importance of design targeted towards the human being and how spaces are able to detonate collaboration and teamwork as the fundamental motor of projects.
