Lobby Vodafone project was connected with the complete relocation of the entire office space of the company from its current location to the newly formed West City office complex in Prague’s Stodůlky. Vodafone had the desire to design entrance lobby in a sign of promising tomorrows, and in the anticipation of the new and positive future stages of the company. The interior should show a reference to what we have done for this international company for more than 10 years and build upon previous successful projects in the retail area.

The atypical nature of the lobby area consists mainly of significant elevations within 3 floors. The high number of internal load-bearing columns greatly influenced the shape of the interior. The total height of the lobby area is 11.7 m. Inside, the northern and eastern side is optically connected with two floors of the building through the gallery, which offers a spectacular view on the lobby.

The physical connection between lobby and 1st floor is made by escalators. The southern facade is glassed and oriented to the communal space of the street. We took advantage of the favorable orientation that allowed us to work with direct sunlight during almost all of the day.

From the interior side we hung shading screens infront of the facade, made from broken branches interrelated to each other. The sun shines through the irregular structure of fine wooden branches and it gives interesting interior lighting effect. The contrast of light and shadows cast on the individual elements of the interior sort of natural projection, which varies throughout the day with movement of the sun.

We wanted to create a feeling you have when lying in the grass in the summer under a tree, when through a dense crown you get tiny reflections of sunlight. At the same time this facade screens create a rich, natural, artistic structure and it is an important element of the space-shaping. Its height compositionally balances and fills a empty space at the top of the lobby area.

We coped with a large number of columns and their distinctive verticality in a way that we included them into the design game. By artificial jacketing of columns to one-half of the height by using the same flooring material we achieved the illusion that the columns are growing from the floor. We used this motif of growing trunk as well on atypically designed seating furniture.

Graphic flooring solution builds on the organic shape of the front desk located in the middle of the layout. Graphics creates a colorful trajectory orbiting the reception. Selected scale and composition of the proposal is tailored to the views from the upper floors from the galleries. Material used should create a feeling of something soft, the illusion of grass, moss and lichen that grows on concrete pillars or furniture. Everything is in the sign of growth.

Shape of the reception desk refers to our previously designed projects for Vodafone. The organic shape is inspired by the company logo. Its location in the middle is based on the principle of balancing the layout and height of the space and is based on a compositional basis. Therefore, the shape does not take place only at the reception floor, but is spatially structured with up to a height of 3.5 m. It uses a maximum of interior verticality. With this reception gained exceptionally dominant position. All interior elements of the lobby except of chairs are designed IO Studio.

Authors: IO Studio s.r.o., Luka Križek, Radek Bláha
Photo: Jonáš Mlejnek