A RECEPTION WITH A POND

This is about a reception area belong to an office in a tenancy office building tower. The tenant, an IT Company just want their appear like traditional housing compund within its meander small roads and gangways surrounding it. Just like a kind of small village.

Not just houses, roads and gangways, but pond and bridge are also found in this place. When the lift car doors are opened, everybody can directly see this reception area within a timber bridge crossing over a pond that leads somebody to a discrete lounge near the office main entrance door.

INSIDE A STEEP HILL HOUSE

This is a snapshot to a house situated at a steep hill in a town at West Java. Step inside this house we will see warm and modern family rooms with stunning view to valleys and hills nearby the house. The using of warm wooden materials on ceilings, windows blind and furnitures that are combined with rustic stone materials on the walls, visually give strong senses of natural and tropical modern touch that is reflected throughout the inside of the family rooms.

The open space order inside the house provide a visual continuity that connecting green courtyard view in the front of the house and valleys and hills view at the opposite cliff hill site. This open space quality is clearly difined and reflected in living area, dining area and its open pantry area.

When somebody have daily cooking activities in the pantry, he or she can have generous view to the front court yard and at the same time can also have another view to the other corner at living room or other corner of dining room and also stunning view to the valley across the cliff hill. Definitely, same experience will be acquired during breakfast time on the round breakfast table adjacent to the pantry unit.

JUST A SMALL HOTEL BATHROOM

This is just a snapshot to a typical hotel bathroom. Typically, the bathroom size is less than 4 (four) square meter. Obviously, this is a small and compact bathroom. The hotel itself is a limited service hotel that is situated in a downtown area nearby the beach at Bali Island. Bathroom layout is simply generated based on the need of vanity area, showering cubicle and closet at corner end-side. Typically, no bathtub is required for standard room.

Vanity console table is made from pre-fabricated stone composite moulding that is integrated with semi-recessed hand basin. A row of solid timber slats are provided underneath the hand basin as towel rack. There are contrasts in color and texture when solid wood characters belong to wood slats rack meet with white-speckle marble surfacing belong to the body of the hand basin table.

Vanity mirror is decorated with white etching pattern in leaves shape to bring in the glimpse of surrounding tropical atmosphere to the bathroom. Same pattern is also found in shower glass divider but in bigger size and appear in elaborated green color to become a fresh visual accent both to bathroom and the bedroom area.

A feeling of fresh-green color is elaborated at back-wall surfacing behind the closet module. This is a wall with glass mosaic tiles in various random green colors. The remaining wall and floor surfacing to the bathroom are simply finished with homogenous tiles in soft broken white colors. It visually give a way for the fresh green color scheme become naturally prominent inside the bathroom space. 

This internal green color accent scheme creating a continuation in associated with vertical greeneries at  typical guestroom balconies and guestroom corridors.

The bathroom is typically attached to standard guestroom with approximately 17 square meter in its typical size. It is a very tight room size. This is become one of the reason why the bathroom has a full-height clear glass wall at its bedroom side. It will provide a feeling of spaciousness.

EXECUTIVE WORKING SUITE

An executive working suite, commonly associated with enclosed working space where top managerial executive of a company are worked. The rooms are bigger than typical office rooms and also are furnished better than typical office rooms. An executive room not just a space that accomodating functional needs for an executive to work comfortably, but also reflecting corporate culture.

When client, guest, or employee entering an executive office, they must find the balance of professionalism with comfortability that offer a great first impression as well as a productive work space. 

It could be happened in an executive office, a very busy situation where a serious business meeting is conducted from morning time till late night. Or maybe it just remain as an empty room  because the executive person are on business duty abroad.

Amenities should be provided for an executive working rooms can vary widely depend on particular personal needs. It could be a wardrobe, safe deposit box, business machine cabinet, small library corner, small meeting corner, coffee maker or minibar cabinet, memorabilia wall and other personal things may be required.

Many confidential things must be kept securely. Not every un-authorized person can entering the room easily. Electronic door access control shall be applied. 

Room enclosure shall meet with particular level of sound-proof requirement. There should be no sound leakages. Private and confidential conversations are commonly undertaken in an executive room, and these should not be transmitted out. Partition detailing and A/C ducting treatments should be well executed to meet with sound-proof room requirements.

Selection of furnishing materials should be carefuly done. Of course, a top executive person require high grade furniture items to support their daily working activities. Floor, ceiling and wall treatments shall also carefuly treated to provide optimum comfortability. 

Smart office automation system is another important aspect should be well considered. An advance smart automation system can provide the user with a green and energy saving environment. Lighting control could be scheduled automatically, the user can do checking to see if any light were left on and want to schedule lights to turn on and off certain days in a week or just turn off anything that is plugged in. Smart office system can also programmable thermostat and lighting dimmer controls to increase energy management.

An advance smart office system also offers a complete line of sensors and security devices as well as camera and surveillance system.to protect an executive office room. This system can provide door lock and access controllers, communicating smoke detectors and wireless sensors to provide necessary protection fron inside and outside of the working rooms.

MEETING ROOMS

First aspect that is directly affecting the design of a meeting room, is number of seat should be accomodated. A meeting room for a small number of seats most likely will require one-pice table that placed in the middle of the room to become center part of meeting activities. If number of seats become numerous, there will be 2 (two) options of meeting table could be provided. First option, use one-piece long fixed table. And second option, to use modular small tables that could be dinamically re-arranged based on particular layout configuration.

If a fixed meeting table scheme is already determined, it could be basic reference to determine further functional audio-visual system that be required to support specific meeting activities. When fixed meeting table is chosen, there will be a lot floor cabling works should be routed out to centralised area underneath meeting table top. Then this cabling works are distributed and connected to individual surface-mounted electronic and electrical ports. These ports could be also installed inside a centralised concealed and covered linear gutter that is place in the middle of large and long meeting table.And when a meeting attendee need to plug in his notebook, he can easly reach power or data ports in the middle of meeting table top.

When small modular meeting tables are used, placement of electrical and electronic outlets shall anticipate the flexibilty of meeting tables arrangement. Commonly there are several pop-up power and data outlet sare provided on meeting floor surface.

Selection of audio-visual equipments also affecting meeting room arrangement. Nowadays, audio-visual technology provide us with many possibilities that affecting the way how we make a meeting activity with somebody or with other group of persons

Visual projection and display system is commonly identified as important aspect in associated with meeting activities. Table and chair arrangement are generated based on how these visual projection and display system are applied in a meeting room. The using of high-density projection system and flat screen technologies signicantly affecting the way we shall have a meeting today.

An advance audio-visual system also provide us with a smart meeting technology that is integrated with how we control lighting illumination in meeting room. This system enable an automatic control to internal lighting illumination level in related with visual display brightness and also natural daylight intensity that come from window opening around a meeting room. Of course, this system provide us with optimum visual comfort that we need for a meeting activities.

Not just visual comfort, another aspect in related with audio matters are also important and should be carefully managed. The acoustic indoor climate has become an important factor when contructing a new meeting room or renovating an old existing meeting room. Several aspects such as room layout size, room height and material selection should be carefully and correctly determined. The using of soft materials which are commonly absorb sound transmission will relatively useful to avoid and eliminate acoustical defects such as echoes, flutter echoes and sound reverberation time problems.

Another acoustical issue need to be carefully identified when we designing and constructing a meeting room is related sound transmission leakage. It should be avoided a condition when a meeting is happened in a meeting room, its noise getting out to another rooms and vice versa.

It could be happened if partition system is not built to comply with sound-proof requirements. Sound leakage also may happened from in-correct A/C ducting design and its installation details.

Meeting room amenities are another aspect need to be well-accommodated in the design. A meeting group that spend hours discussing serious matters need to be supported with a refreshment corner. It could be a small place in meeting room corner where a coffee maker and water dispenser are provided. This corner could also be equipped with centralized counter where meeting attendees can charging their personal cellular phones.

Anyway, a virtual meeting activity, most likely is becoming common practice today where a large number of people don't need a physical gathering in a 'real' meeting room. Technology now enabling them to be connected virtually and remotely without room or even country borders. Maybe an international corporate office do not need anymore to built too many meeting rooms in their premises. 

Corridors Through Working Spaces

If a question is raised:"What is corridor function in a working space environment ?"

Maybe, most common answer is space where circulation of a person and/or a group of persons from a place to another different place could be easily and safely enabled. Most probably this flow of circulation not merely involving a person but also including particular good that a person carry along with. 

An easy circulation movement could be associated with comfortable movement when a person or two persons (or maybe more than two persons) are passing this corridor without distracting each other.

Corridor should be well planned based on health and safety requlations. In case of emergency situations, corridor shall provide safe route of esape that enabling large number of people could be evacuated as quickly and safely as possible.

Corridor in an office environment is also closely related with how people are interacting and interfacing between each other based on particular working organizational structure and culture. Not merely interaction between a person to other person, maybe it also related with interaction between a person with a particular equipment.

Good corridor scheme in an office environment could help to provide better relationship between employee behavior and job satisfaction. Good corridor scheme as an integral part of an working environment, can also encourage working productivity.

Corridor should not appear as just a long boring space that separating a room to another room and/or separating one enclosed room to another open working space. It could be visually appear in more interesting appearances. 

By the using of particular treatment on a corridor wall for example, we can use this wall feature as visual sign to identify and differentiate a particular space zone in a large open space, to avoid an employee losing his or their spatial orientation.

We can also can explore different treatment on corridor to differentiate one office department to another office department. And it also commonly found that specific treatment to corridor as part of executive area to be differentiate to other corridor at general office area.

Specific interior treatment in corridor could be achieved by the using specific material on its floor, wall and ceiling. Specific lighting treatment is also have an important role to define specific function of a corridor.

Sometime, corridor shall provide a certain level of visual privacy. In this case, level of illumination and placement of lighting fixtures are become very critical. Maybe, lighting treatment should be provided in such a way to make somebodys face not directly received lighting hotspot. 

Acoustical consideration is also important. Long corridor should not provided within hard flooring materials since it will make disturbing noise that might be potentially come from somebody walking on their shoes.