Finastra
- FinTech
- Completion August 2020
- 675sqm
- Turnkey Design & Build | Project Management
Innovative Spaces
ID was contracted by multi-national Fintech leader, Finastra, to design and build their first head office in Africa. The office is located at 144 Oxford, Rosebank, Johannesburg.
The spatial programme is designed with Finastra’s brand identity at its core. The layout has a natural flow throughout the space, leading you from the client-facing business hub to the employee-centric work hub.
The design language and materiality continue the sense of flow through the horizontal and vertical layering and intricate detailing. The sophisticated interior took inspiration from the art of yacht designs with complex detailing to achieve a state-of-the-art, minimalist look.
Creative Solutions
Key to the project’s success were numerous innovative firsts for the South African design and build market where ID developed several highly creative design solutions. Some of which included:
- Foldable, retractable boardroom tables
- Walk-and-Talk-Sales Tunnel
- Manufacturing, Design and Installation of
- Replica Indoor Baobab Tree
- Invisible access control readers
- Hidden services doors
- All-surface-writable collaborative room
- Organically curved joinery solutions with ground-breaking technology to build and install off and on-site
Interior Elegance
ID was appointed as the Principal Agent to deliver turnkey project services that included: Legal Negotiations, Interior Design & Documentation, Project Management, Cost Management, Procurement Management, Site Co-ordination, Services Co-ordination, Move and Relocation, Builders-work Construction, Joinery Manufacturing, Finishes, Furniture and Equipment procurement and even sourcing for Events Management.
Set against the beautiful Johannesburg backdrop, in the pristine newly built 144 Oxford. Finastra’s head office embodies a vibrant, warm, welcoming space.
Every inch of the interior is designed to accentuate the elegance of the interior. Clients, Employees and Visitors are welcomed into a central business area, where they are served with beverages at a variety of low and bar height seating. The reception and coffee counters are custom designed, complex curvaceous joinery units, designed to enhance the circulation, visual and material flow through the space.
Space Utilisation
Adjoining the welcome area is a 12-seater boardroom, with an acoustic divisible wall to allow the space to be divided into two separate meeting rooms. As part of this space, ID designed a foldable meeting table to accommodate state-of-the-art technology. Employees can also use the all-surface WAR room for effective collaboration, the Conference Room with a sit-stand Media-scape for video conferences and a 4-seater meeting table. We created a visual link from the reception entrance to the Work-Hub entrance using bespoke green walls with only indigenous plants from South Africa.
Employees enter the Work-Hub through an access-controlled, electronic glass sliding door, opening into a purpose-made replica Baobab tree, with the Impala Lilies at the bottom of the tree resembling exactly that of which one would find in the South African bushveld.
Local Culture
Although Finastra is a global company, they wanted to incorporate the local culture through elements of our local flora and fauna.
In the Work-Hub is a library space with two adjoining, team collaboration booths overlooking the open plan environment. Each employee has their locker, built from timber slats that surrounds the interior façade thus creating another visual link to nature.
Each desk is an electronic adjustable sit-stand desk that improves productivity through continuous activation. The open plan has a 180-degree view of the Rosebank cityscape, allowing for an abundance of natural light in the workspace. As the Johannesburg team has a large sales team component, ID designed a walk-and-talk tunnel where people can take a call in an acoustically sound space while being seated or walking without disrupting colleagues.
Work Settings
In the break-away, amphitheatre-style seating hugs the remainder of the surrounding view of the façade. – the space has electronic block-out blinds that allow the space to become multifunctionally with a large interactive TV that enables the global offices around the world to connect physically and virtually.
The outside terrace has a putting green and external seating. There are a large variety of spaces throughout the workplace that allows Finastra employees to interact with their work environment and connect with the exterior even whilst high being in a multi-story building. Throughout the interior space, we incorporated work settings that provide for different types of interaction, being the built-in benches around the perimeter – connecting the open plan benches and allowing for informal communication, to suspended hanging chairs where people can reflect, considering they generally work over 8 hours a day.
Finastra’s South African team returned to the office in August 2020 as soon as their offices were completed. Considering the global mandate was that all Finastra employees were to remain working from home – the local SA team could not wait for any further to return to their new offices in Rosebank as it was such an inviting, creative and fun space.
