Mamma Team Productions | Natalia Gomez Angelats

Interior design project for the new headquarters of Mamma Team Productions, a leader advertising producer in both Service and National.

The client asked that the decision to move from a diaphanous industrial warehouse in the emergent neighbourhood of Poble Nou to a sober floor, with a classicist modernist distribution, catalogued/listed and in the heart of the city, does not vary the open spirit and equipment acquired while working in an open-space set up.

It is requested that the new space has to be versatile to the changes of equipment, in terms of the number of people working in them and, at the same time, that the space allows to work to different teams in different projects.

Customers provided a unique photo as aesthetic reference and described what they wanted as "a sober, very masculine space, combined with some touch out of context: a wink." They gave two months of time for the realization of the project.

Natalia Gomez Angelats, interior designer and project director responsible for the design of the project and the search and / or design of the furniture hired Javier Elizalde, a building engineer, to control the works and who moved his work table to the construction site to have everything under control and, also Gema Ospital, interior designer, who handled the management of purchases, deliveries and calendar timings.

The flat has an area of ​​250m2, and as it is listed as a city heritage, no structural variation can be made. The basic work is to clean this architecture jewel, buried in a dark academy skin: ceilings, carpentry, polishing the hydraulic mosaic, restore the grandeur that emanates and make it shine.

To unify the whole container to the maximum I chose the colour of the walls and ceilings to be always the same, the hydraulic mosaic to be polished without giving it the last layer of gloss, giving it a more timeless touch. For the team worktables an iron structure with a white top is made, and the facilities (electrical, network, etc.) are included to all of them so that the necessary equipment (of 2/4/6/8 people) can be connected at the same time. The sitting is also unified with the same model of armchair in 90% of the workplaces with a natural leather wheeled Eames chair. 

The pieces of furniture are specially looked for and they go from icons of the worldwide design (1950, 1960 and 1970 years) combined with new designs with the same aesthetic and other anonymous found in stores and markets.

At the entrance I have set two seats of Dieter Rams, under a crystal chandelier from the 70s, possibly from Circa. In addition to a rosewood wooden desk on newly constructed iron structure and an original lamp by Óscar Torlasco. Finally a low cabinet with a structure of metal and glass also original of the 70s is placed.

The illumination of all the spaces is treated in a specific way, differentiating two types of lighting: a more general one that comes from two models of wall lamps repeated in all the spaces: the two arm Mouille wall lamp, in combination with the Warren wall lamp by Soren Rose Studio. The rest of the lighting are table lamps found in shops and markets.

The general working furniture consists of large tables of 2m x 2m and 1.5m x 2.5m, with iron structure and white top. Reproductions of tables from the 50s have also been designed to satisfy the measures needed by the space.

The meeting room asked for the Saarinen's tulip table for Knoll and it was indeed a perfect fit. The rest of the furniture has been combined with side tables (current design of Antique Boutique, in special measures for this project), Marcel Breuer's Cesca armchairs, and the Dutch silver and gold metal lamp Fog & Morup. The windows have been covered with black independent screens to be able to adjust the lighting freely.

The corridor is the communicating element between the two typical areas in the old flats of Barcelona and in this case, will become the area of ​​communication between national and international project teams. On the wall a painting-slate of Smart Surfaces has been placed which would be completely camouflaged if it weren’t always full since it’s become the schedule of the shootings of the month. The tables and the set of armchairs that we find in the corridor are also thought of as workplaces.

The polyvalent hall, crowned by a Matterhorn mural, is a space with different functions that you can access from the centre of the corridor. The furniture that we find inside is a restored sofa from Wikkelso, two low tables specially made for this space, leather armchairs that came from the previous office and finally, a curious piece, a Swedish wood furniture and black Formica that has a cabinet-bar and a refrigerator inside, in perfect condition and operation, from 1960. A velvet curtain has also been placed; falling from a height of about 3 meters it is used like a dresser, in a similar way as a roll of photographic paper hanged in a wall does in the castings set.

In the accountancy office a String library has been placed in addition to the "corporate" furniture: tables with iron structure and white top. In this room the type of chair has been changed by a more functional one.

For the post-production room a 3-meter long table in rosewood wood and with two heights to be able to put the different monitors has been built. The rest of the furniture to be mentioned are a vintage black leather Chester sofa, a 50s French low table made of iron and glass, a custom made piece of furniture and an original green glass Milá table lamp. On the walls hung deer heads with certificate of the 70s and a box found in a flea market.

The small round room overlooking Rambla Catalunya has been projected as a comfortable space with two French armchairs from 1970 made of bamboo and leather, a circular low brass table, a lamp by Jordi Canudas and hanging plants.

In the bathrooms a further toilet has been made in the place where the laundry room was, maintaining the distribution and original carpentry, as in the rest of the space. The walls have been papered in different prints: one with a Cole & Son design, the other with an Aribau paper design and the third one has been painted in dark blue. Mirrors, bookstores and other decorations are all original from the 50s.

The kitchen has also been conceived as a meeting room. The furnishings, the tiles, the marble and the charcoal oven have been kept. The oven has been indiscriminately painted in a cold grey from an indeterminate height down. The worktops have been covered with an Iroko wood top, for hygiene and comfort. The lockers have been used to locate the different containers of waste recycling and the refrigerator has been placed in the pantry, covered with a curtain of wooden pellets. The furniture consists of a large table of washed pine, old school chairs and two hanging balloons of white opaline in addition to Ikea wall lamps, pictures and decorative copper objects found in flea markets.

The nature element is something that I wanted to make it present and in sight. It was not possible to add it in each office since they did not have sufficient light and required a complex maintenance, so we chose to put plants in sight only in the spaces in which we are in movement and where the plants had more chances to survive: in the round room and in the hallway next to a window. Pots have also been placed outside the boardroom and on the adjoining balcony.

"This is a project that is not closed, because we are still incorporating curious pieces that I find."