Start-up Office »Onefootball« in Berlin
Business on the one hand and party on the other: the spaces of the app builders “Onefootball” can actually be “played” in various ways. The start-up company, formed in 2008, provides more than 19 million fans worldwide with information on one hundred different football leagues. Along a large partition wall made of artificial turf, Otl Aicher’s well-known football pictogram indicates the central motto: “It’s not a game, it’s football.” The sincerity of this statement is reflected in the balance created by the Munich-based office TKEZ architecture for this complex and permeable office landscape and its 90 staff members. In terms of spatial flexibility and acoustic outfitting, the design leaves nothing to be desired. The selection of workplaces ranges from an open-plan office to group or individual offices with glass partitions to meeting niches for informal use or flex spaces for standing and with a view towards the courtyard. A stylized carpet as tartan track in lawn green connects the different office zones. It accentuates the flow of movement, passes through the entire length of the office space with its otherwise neutral colours, and directs the view — topically self-evident — towards a football goal. Whoever feels that kicking the ball is too provocative can vent off steam at one of the two kicker tables in the recreation area. The colour green is a central design element and highlights the floor surfaces of the acoustically separated offices and meeting rooms. It mutates into a true statement of “corporate branding” in the so-called arena. Aside from staff meetings and presentations, the ascending semi-circle hosts regular in-house football broadcasts. Sitting steps covered with artificial turf, a luminous LED ceiling that brings to light the colours of your favourite team and a beamer that projects recent matches onto an extractable screen: through a limited number of well-refined measures, a muted office space is transformed, in the next instant, into a temporary space of desire for every football aficionado.
