Nowadays, work-life balance is an evolving concept. In a nutshell, “work-life balance” is about achieving a combination of business and personal life. We are all unique, and the term “personal life” has a different connotation for each of us. It includes spending time with friends and family, relaxing, hobbies, attending personal, spiritual, or educational programs and courses, exercising, and meditation. It can even include our jobs and occupation in general. The theme of the project, which was about sports equipment sales office, led us to the idea of creating a greater balance between the workplace and health by breaking the clichés about managing an office, looking at it from a new perspective, and integrating it with a sports show.

Aka company provides services in all stages of setting up sports clubs from design to equipping services. The project was handed over to us in an office building in Kamranie, Tehran and the employer’s goal was to create an integrated office space for sales and customer service.

The contrast between office space and sports was an issue that led us in a different direction at the beginning of the project. Our first suggestion was to integrate the exhibition or showroom with the office environment, which brought us closer to two goals. Firstly, to change the definition of a company employee to a sports-employee, and the second is to provide product samples to the audience in a space similar to a sports venue.

On the other hand, sport and exercise is a hard and arduous process, which is a passage to achieve a better life and peace of mind. At the same time, this seemingly arduous passage can be turned into a pleasant game and entertainment that is part of the lifestyle and not a path to a temporary goal.

We redirected the project to one peculiar path with several goals. In regards to space, we evoked a more duteous and tougher path, called the “sports path,” which leads to agreeable and subtle goals. The transition spaces were designed with harder and coarser materials. Sports elements can be seen in these unadorned spaces, pig iron, concrete, and other pure materials expose the seriousness and solemnity of the space. After passing through this path, the corridor reaches spaces with more refined and pleasant materials such as wood, carpets, and plants.

Balance is the key to the design of furniture and various elements of the project. Moreover, by moving through the spaces, the audience is obliged to pass between these two trajectories frequently and experience the equilibrium between two opposites as well.