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Pita Arquitetura give Latin America’s largest travel agent, Decolar, a head office transformation

By Courtney Constable

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Published on

In the city centre of Barueri, Brazil, innovative designers at Pita Arquitetura have recently completed a stunning office transformation for a brand new brand of the travel agency Decolar.

This company is actually the largest online travel agency in all of Latin America. They have offices in several places across the continent despite functioning primarily as an online service, but this new space is designed to provide more of a central hub for the company’s organizational elements despite not being officially designated an actual “head office”.

Because the company has been going through so much growth lately, executives made the decision to build a new office that might act like a hub for a lot of its organizational operations. They also needed a larger workspace for their employees than they had access to earlier thanks to the way the company has grown. They took this as an opportunity to build an office that is a little more connected to the company’s vision and working style than their previous space was.

Previously located near Sao Paulo’s international airport, in a city called Guarulhos, the office has undergone a relaxation and focus based transformation intended for the better of employees and clients alike, despite its change in scenery. This is partially because the new area is slightly more metropolitan, giving prospective clients better access to its services and customer representatives.

One unique challenge within this move was actually extraneous to the new space itself but integral to the inner workings of the company’s staff. After the move, the company intended to keep the same teams, but they knew that moving the office to Barueri would increase the distance of travel required each morning for those who were used to working in Guarulhos.

In order to make up for this change in commute, executives and designers together decided to concentrate on what employees actually use, want, and need in order to create a new working space that’s simply so good, welcoming, and comfortable that it makes the further distance traveled by those employees living closer to the previous location feel genuinely worth it.

At its base, the office was rooted in the concept of connection. Designers wanted all spaces to be connected in order to enable all teams within their workplace systems to be connected. This was inspired by the belief that, in some way, all people are connected; a concept that is very well linked to the travel industry. In order to build these connected spaces, design teams employed the benefits of the curve.

By this, we mean that the rooms, spaces, furnishings, and features all have a distinct curvature to them. This creates a sense of flow, as though nothing is cut off from anything else. The visual of so many complementary curved shapes appears to guide employees through the office. Designers enjoyed creating a space that bears a sense of curiosity, as though one might discover something great beyond the next bend in their path.

Materiality was chosen quite intentionally in this space, as a complementary piece and a sort of grounding to the curving shapes. Bright colours pop well against a natural wood that provides a lightly coloured palette, contrasting against the brighter hues. Most floors and work stations feature this neutrality while inner booths and stunning greenery hanging from the ceiling create visual interest.

Designers also contracted local artists to create stunning street art inspired murals and pieces within certain areas, like meeting spaces and break rooms. This brings a sense of local culture to a place that encourages people to experience all kinds of cultures and inspires those who work there on a daily basis.

At the heart of the office is a mutual and collaborative productivity space called “the work cafe”. This is where all other spots lead to, converge, and connect, like a nucleus. Designers created this to be a space where people from all different departments, floors, and so on can meet, discuss, rest, eat together, or even get work done with some different scenery than usual.

Within this work cafe, all of the tables, chairs, modular couches, and “meeting cubes” are movable. This makes the space diverse and customizable, truly catering it to the needs, comforts, and preferences of any type of employee or client doing just about any task. This free-work atmosphere is one of the many elements that keeps employees from farther away happy enough with the space to keep working in the new office despite the lengthier commute.

Photos by Renato Navarro

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About Courtney Constable

Courtney has over five years experience as a writer, editor and consultant who specializes in architecture and home interiors. She has contributed content to HomeDSGN since 2018 and her work has also appeared on MyDomaine, Archilovers and Apartment Therapy. Learn more about HomeDSGN's Editorial Process.

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