Designing a modern space for a technical company
We are sitting here in Elcon’s new headquarters, which we inaugurated in mid-January 2022. Elcon is a green electrical installation company located across Denmark. We have around 1,200 employees nationwide, and our main customers are typically in the B2B market. This includes industry, light commercial businesses and larger buildings.
We started this project together with Elcon because they wanted to bring all their employees here in Jutland together under one roof in the Aarhus area. The goal was to bring employees back into the office environment – to make people want to come in from home and feel embraced by this new building.
The way Ambiente is able to build a strong collaboration is by taking the time to understand what kind of company we are.
From the very beginning, we had the idea that whether you stood outside or walked inside the building, the experience should be the same. We have created transparency by allowing people to walk into the atrium, continue into our dining area and then into our production space, where you can actually see through the entire building. I think that is a really good creative element that we have succeeded well with.
One of the things I think has been completely untraditional compared to normal consultancy has been Ambiente’s ability to incorporate our existing furniture – much of what we already had – into something new. In doing so, they helped reduce the costs of building new while also thinking sustainably by reusing as much as possible from what we already owned.
One of the elements that has been extraordinary for me, and still is, is our benches that are shaped around the large trees. First of all, I think we succeeded with what was our ambition – to bring nature inside. And I think it is an extremely beautiful element to have in this raw building, where there is concrete, where there is acoustic wood panelling in the ceilings, and then we have this fantastic, living element in the trees with the soft wood that has been shaped.
Ambiente has helped challenge our habitual thinking and moved us towards creating a more contemporary and modern expression. They have thrown many ideas on the table and been very inspiring. Some of them we have embraced, and others we have had to let go because they did not fit with us. But together we have created a fantastic result that truly works for Elcon.
A technically heavy company like ours – compared to a completely different type of company – they understand what kind of building should be created for what kind of employees.