naice stacks wooden volumes inside old berlin factory for urban mobility startup’s offices

in a loft-space in a former factory building in berlin, naice studio designed the new headquarters for an urban mobility start-up company. the mixed-use space houses the offices, presentation areas and meeting rooms, and an electric-bike workshop, tying the industrial and energetic atmosphere together. the company consults agencies, municipal governments, public transportation providers, and housing cooperatives’ and provides them with innovative approaches to economic and social trends of urban mobility.

all images © ludger paffrath

naice took the company’s refreshing vision and translated it to the minimal, yet highly functional, interior design. various functions like fixed work spaces, a showroom that can also be used for events, a small café and a bike workshop for assembling e-bikes are spatially separated, but experienced as a whole. guests and workers navigate through the different-height rooms, entering into glass doors, yet always feeling like a part of the bigger space. 

so, instead of separating surfaces according to a fixed spatial plan, the designers developed an open, flowing spatial concept. the architects’ goal was to keep the industrial look and feel of the factory’s existing elements and impression of the factory floor to allow for flexible spatial construction. volumes of various sizes and colors, house different functions: a kitchenette, a conference area, a meeting room, sanitary units, and storage. 

through their arrangement in the middle of the space, they divide the loft into sectors of privacy. the blocks divide the factory into a front, public area with zones of presentation and interaction, and a rear, semipublic realm with workspaces and a workshop for the montage of the bikes. the cubes are piled up and arranged in such a fashion that the architectural separation of the two areas remains permeable. 

a stairway is cut into a cube to allow visitors to change their perspective and view the space from a different level. the staircase leads to an upper mezzanine, a place designed for concentration with an overview of the entire area. the construction in wooden materials as a sustainable building material harmonizes with the company’s sustainable ecological approach and makes it possible to react flexibly to changes and growth in the company.

project info:

location: berlin, germany

client: start-up for urban mobility

design: naice

team: simon kassner, wilko hoffmann, ashutosh sharma, frieder vogler

time: november 2019 – january 2020

size: 350 m2

photographer: ludger paffrath, berlin

designboom has received this project from our ‘DIY submissions‘ feature, where we welcome our readers to submit their own work for publication. see more project submissions from our readers here.

edited by: cristina gomez | designboom