Urban Confluence
BUILD THE CITY FIRST, THE BUILDINGS SECOND.
Shared infrastructure and public life are established first; workplace capacity grows progressively with demand.
We no longer need the office simply to work. A computer, a connection, and a few square metres are often enough. Production has detached itself from the desk, meetings have migrated to screens, working hours have become flexible, and the boundaries between work and everyday life have blurred. The fundamental logic on which the office was built for decades — bringing people together in one place in order to make them work — is no longer sufficient on its own. But if we are not going to the office for working, why do we go to the office? Perhaps the future of the physical workplace lies precisely within this question.
People no longer come to the office only to produce. They come to encounter others, to be seen, to exchange ideas, to unexpectedly enter a conversation, to eat together, to spend a moment alone, to learn something, to exercise, or simply to be among other people. Digital environments can sustain work, but they cannot reproduce in the same way the intensity created by a city, a community, and unexpected encounters. The question, therefore, is not simply how to create a new office typology, but how to redefine the place of work within life itself.
The rigid boundaries between work and rest, production and socialisation, private and shared, corporate and public are gradually losing their meaning. A new working environment is not merely a more comfortable desk or a more flexible plan. It is a system capable of bringing different moments of the day and different ways of living together within the same environment.
The office is no longer the destination.
The city is. Our project approaches this transformation not through isolated office buildings, but through the relationship between the office and the city. Three office blocks are positioned not as self-contained corporate objects, but on a shared ground that connects work with commerce, culture, public life, landscape, and the river. In this way, the workplace is no longer something that begins and ends at the entrance of a building; it becomes part of a broader system of everyday life spread across the entire site. The inner street forms the main spine of this shared ground.
It is not merely a circulation route connecting different programmes, but the social, economic, and public core of the project. Movement beginning from the road frontage encounters retail units of different scales, cafés, restaurants, bars, coworking areas, temporary markets, and shared spaces. Rather than simply entering a building, the user enters a fragment of the city in which multiple forms of use coexist.
An office and a public realm, almost like a fairytale.
Here, “fairytale” does not suggest an escape from reality, but an unexpected enrichment of everyday life. It describes an environment in which a working day is no longer confined to the desk and the meeting room; an encounter in the inner street, a conversation in a café, a short break outdoors, or an unexpected event can all become part of the day. Working life and public life are not separated, but overlap within the same spatial system. One of the most important decisions shaping the inner street is that the surrounding programmes are designed to be as rentable, divisible, and adaptable over time as possible.
Commercial areas are not organised around the needs of a single large operator, but as a modular system capable of accommodating tenants of different scales. Small retail units, restaurants, cafés, bars, coworking spaces, pop-up markets, and artisan markets can operate independently while also being combined or transformed into new uses when necessary. This flexibility is not merely an economic decision; it directly defines the character of the inner street.
Instead of a sterile commercial corridor dominated by a single business model, it creates a more open urban environment where different users and different economic scales can coexist. Alongside larger businesses, local producers, small enterprises, temporary markets, and seasonal events can also become part of the system.
Not one programme.
Not one tenant. Not one way of using the city. The inner street therefore becomes a space that constantly changes character throughout the day. In the morning, coworking spaces and cafés are more active; around midday, restaurants and shared dining areas come to the foreground. In the evening, bars, events, social programmes, and cultural uses create a different atmosphere. The same space can be redefined by different groups of users at different times. The position of the inner street is also determined through its relationship with the existing Museum.
The aim of the new development is not to dominate the Museum level or to create a stronger architectural frontage in front of it. On the contrary, the intention is to preserve the Museum’s existing public significance and integrate it as an active part of the new system. The building masses therefore pull back instead of forming a continuous façade competing with the Museum, leaving an open field for public movement. Visitors arriving from the Museum are drawn directly into the inner street.
This decision is particularly important because the Museum is not considered merely as a neighbouring building to be preserved, but as one of the starting points of public circulation. An experience beginning in the Museum can continue into the inner street, from where the user may move toward a café, a restaurant, a temporary market, a coworking area, or the open spaces leading toward the river.
The museum does not end at its door.
The public route continues. Through this continuity, culture, commerce, and everyday life no longer operate as disconnected programmes. The Museum retains its own level and architectural presence, while the new project does not attempt to overshadow it, but instead extends public life around and beyond it. The organisation of the building masses follows the same principle. The office blocks do not create a continuous barrier at ground level. The spaces between them — squares, passages, and landscape pockets — become primary spatial elements of the project.
Separating the three office blocks reduces the perceived scale of the massing while increasing the public permeability of the ground. Office lobbies connect directly to the inner street, allowing employees, visitors, and citizens to share the same common ground. At this point, the boundary of the office itself begins to dissolve. Before users even reach their building, they are already immersed in a social environment that forms part of contemporary working culture. Coworking spaces, cafés, restaurants, open work surfaces, and shared areas extend beyond the office lobby.
Work is no longer contained within a floor plan; it spreads across an entire urban experience.
No walls, no centre, no spectators.
The internal organisation of the three office blocks continues this flexibility. Typical floors of approximately 1,200 m2 are not designed around the fixed structure of a single company, but as adaptable platforms that can be reconfigured over time according to different tenants, team sizes, and changing working practices. Open workspaces, meeting areas, quiet zones, and shared social spaces can be arranged in multiple combinations. Yet the most significant expansion of working culture occurs outside the office floors themselves.
Coworking areas, Work & Dine spaces, cafés, shared meeting zones, open terraces, and landscape surfaces are treated as natural extensions of working life. Throughout the day, users can move between spaces of different intensities without having to draw a strict line between work and pause.
More than a structure, it is a shared terrain.
Topography becomes an important tool in strengthening this shared ground. Different levels are not treated as isolated platforms, but as parts of a continuous sequence of public movement. The denser commercial character along the road frontage gradually dissolves through the inner street and becomes more open, greener, and more recreational toward the river. As one moves from the city toward the river, built density decreases while the influence of landscape and open space increases. This transition is not only physical. The programme changes in the same direction.
A more open sequence emerges from the dense retail and commercial uses along the road, through the social and shared programmes of the inner street, toward coworking, sports, recreation, and open landscape areas. The river is therefore not treated as the back façade of the project. Public movement beginning in the inner street reaches the river through open spaces, terraces, green roofs, and landscape surfaces. A continuous public route is formed, beginning at the road frontage, engaging with the Museum, passing through the inner street, and continuing toward the riverfront.
From work to city.
From city to river. Landscape is not treated as a decorative complement to this route, but as its urban and environmental infrastructure. Green roofs, rain gardens, permeable surfaces, and densely planted areas define the character of the public realm while also contributing to stormwater management, microclimate, and biodiversity. In this way, the boundary between architecture and landscape gradually dissolves. Across the entire project, the aim is not to add more programmes, but to allow different programmes to generate value through their relationships with one another.
The Museum feeds the inner street; the inner street connects commercial life with the offices; coworking spaces extend work into the public realm; rentable units create economic diversity; and the landscape carries the entire system toward the river.
Not built to stand — built to move with us.
This approach also allows the project to change over time. Tenants may change, programmes may expand or contract, and working habits may continue to evolve. The role of the architectural system is not to control these changes, but to create a robust and flexible framework in which they can occur. Perhaps what the new culture of work needs is not more office space. It needs more encounters, more choices, more public life, and more freedom.
The formula for happiness?
Perhaps there is no single formula. But creating a place where people come not because they have to work there, but because they genuinely want to be there, might be a good place to start.