Office TOTAL

From a cellular office to an open office – the French oil company TOTAL shows how it’s done. The company moved 500 employees from a listed building into a new building: from the Mosse-Haus in the central Mitte district of Berlin to the Europacity site near Berlin’s central station. The company’s new German headquarters – the 69 metre tall “Tour TOTAL” – was designed by the Berlin architecture practice Barkow Leibinger. The pleasant, brightly lit and well-proportioned premises offer the perfect conditions for the modern office landscapes that Bene provides.

Anticipative office planning for increased acceptance
TOTAL’s previous office space was predominantly made up of cellular offices for one to two people, so the company wanted a flexible, open space solution with numerous communication zones for their new space. Planning for the new spaces in the office was carried out by the commercial real estate consult-ing firm Jones Lang LaSalle working together with TOTAL employees. TOTAL wanted to ensure the smoothest possible transition from the old cellular office layout to the new open space design, in which each large capacity floor has space for 40 to 50 employees. To that end, TOTAL established internal working groups a full three years before the planned moving date with the remit of identifying the re-quirements that had to be met by the new working environment.

Numerous working groups made up of TOTAL employees took part in organising the move. Over the course of one year, a variety of furniture items, lighting systems and carpets were put to the test in an interim office built for this purpose. Following this “pilot phase”, the products that best met the employ-ees’ daily needs and requirements were chosen and installed in a model area in the old headquarters’ atrium. “Transparency and an opportunity for true employee participation – these were the decisive factors in ensuring the eventual acceptance of the new working environment in TOUR TOTAL”, ex-plains Pascal Havy, project manager at TOTAL Germany.
Bene’s comprehensive, diversified proposal won over the project management as well as the compa-ny’s employees in a two-stage bidding process. The twelve office floors, each designed with an open layout with about 400 square metres of space, provide zones for focused work and meetings as well as areas for informal, free communication. Bene also devised the interior design and lighting concepts.

Pascal Havy, project manager at TOTAL: “Communication and mobility are very important to us. Bene understood and supported our master plan right from the start and implemented our desired concept in a coherent manner. The team’s work with us was characterised by its utmost professionalism. Their customer support was exemplary.”

PARCS provides accents and creates space for exchange
The design concept was executed consistently on all of the building’s floors. It was important to those who were involved that the design reflect the company’s flat organisational structure and provide plenty of space for spontaneous meetings and exchange of ideas. This was achieved through the use of ele-ments from the PARCS series, including PARCS Causeways, Club Chairs and Pop ups.

The design of managers’ offices also demonstrated restraint while providing intelligent and superior integration of media and technological components at the same time.
A central element in the office spaces are the work islands for four people using Bene’s T-Platform and the multifunctional boxes that are accessible from either side. A conscious decision was made not to use dividing walls so as to promote and support communication across the various departments. Struc-ture is instead provided in the space by cabinets, the height of which comes up to about the average person’s chest. The workspaces are predominantly classic white with light green accents. This fresh colour concept was also chosen by the employees themselves.

Focused communication in the “Cocoon”
The “Cocoons”, developed especially for TOTAL from Bene’s Space-in-Space systems, serve as areas for discussions and provide space for spontaneous team meetings or quiet, individual work. The cubi-cles shield the user(s) acoustically and visually from the surrounding open office. The Cocoons, which measure 2.1 metres in height and 2.3 metres in width, provide space for up to four people and offer users a whiteboard as well as power and data connections.
To sum up: An extensive preliminary stage that included employee input, an intelligent concept and professional implementation ensured that this move into an open-plan office was a “total” success.

Architektur: Barkow Leibinger