If’s true that a garden is like a business card of a villa, a house or a hotel, this is also true for companies. Corporate headquarters also communicate at an “aesthetic” level and they must take into account the impact that the exterior of their headquarters generates on the visitor.
For this reason corporate gardens and green areas must give personality and charisma to the buildings and must reflect 100% the company’s philosophy, its way of thinking and working, its objectives. The garden is to all effects part of a company, in a physical and symbolic way.
There is in fact an essential symbiosis between the inside and the outside of a building as there is also a strong link between the outdoor and the landscape surrounding the garden.
This is even truer for companies and indeed some global ones have even made of the green their hallmark.
From the egregious examples of Microsoft whose headquarters houses real sport facilities, that of Twitter in San Francisco that has a roof garden with business café, to the headquarters of Amazon in Seattle where 1,800 employees will work in three huge glass spheres with hanging gardens and filled by light.
NBBJ Studio 2016©
And what to say about the wonderful idea of the architectural studio Selgascano and its tubular capsule in the woods? Only 20 mm of thickness between the office and the forest to work immersed in nature, accompanied by therapeutic sounds.
Selgascano headquarter via CNN©
In my career I have taken care of numerous business gardens of all types: outdoor gardens, green roofs, but also unexpected plant walls inside companies headquarters.
The design of this type of green space meets the same standards of the garden of a villa or a house and the secret is always the harmony. With the building and with the surrounding context.
As for corporate green walls I have realized different in the UAE. Such as the new and technological refinery plant in Abu Dhabi or the vertical gardens of a new energy complex, always in Abu Dhabi. The strength of these achievements is certainly the surprise effect. Not visible from the outside these green walls unexpectedly welcome visitors, charming him with the sudden force of the green.
Then I created a very special garden for an artisan goldsmith. The venue is original and it is made with a glass structure with a central overturned diamond shaped dome. A jewel-building that required a garden just as valuable. For this reason I realized a cosy space recreating the diamond, the symbol of the company, also in a green elements using herbaceous perennials, ground cover and granules.
The Olea Europea has been placed in the centre surrounded by Cactus and spherical light fixtures, which recall the circular area.
This last example clearly reflects my creative philosophy of a business garden.
I believe that green areas should necessarily mirror the world they are representing: goals, mission, vision and corporate working philosophy.
This way a visitor immediately visualizes the strength, the personality and the coherence of a company.
Marco Sandrini, Chief Landscape Designer at Sandrini Green Architecture
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