Swiss Re (source: Courtesy of CBRE)
Good office spaces keep employees happy at work, while having a modern, healthy and attractive office is also an efficient tool for recruiting new talent. Companies in Slovakia are aware what influence the working environment has on their employees and design their offices accordingly, show results of an annual competition organised by the real estate consultancy CBRE.
“Each year I see a significant improvement in the quality of enrolled offices in all aspects – from the company’s workplace strategy via questions related to the health of employees up to architecture,” said Tomáš Hegedűš, executive director of CBRE in Slovakia, as cited in a press release. “It has also been seen that companies in Slovakia follow world trends and do not want to lag behind.”
Who is the winner?
The Slovak arm of the Swiss reinsurance company Swiss Re, with its offices in the newly built Twin City at Mlynské Nivy in Bratislava, is the overall winner of the third year of the competition, acquiring the prize Office of the Year.
ČSOB with its offices in the new development Zuckermandel near the Danube River won the category of Health Office; other shortlisted offices were those of Swiss Re, Poštová Banka, Dentsu Aegis and Green Foundation.
Swiss Re also won the category Innovative Office. Other shortlisted companies included Lucron, Accenture, 365.bank and Dentsu Aegis.
The jury choose offices of the Slovak edition of the Forbes magazine at Mlynské Nivy as the winner of the category Office as the DNA of the Company. It competed with Platform, Green Foundation, Roche Slovensko, Eset and Forbes.
Private Consulting Group is the winner of the public vote.
More offices enrolled
A total of 38 companies enrolled in the competition, two more than last year. The jury featured five experts, especially architects and designers: Florian Frotscher from Woods Bagot in London, Barbora Markechová from the Prague-based branch of Bogle Architects, Nina Weisslechner from Artworks, Braňo Kaliský from A1 Respect Architecture and Hegedűš.
The competition impressed prominent architect Frotscher, who was astonished by the wide variety of offices the jury assessed, from small, very specific and tailor-made up to large corporate ones, but well and stylishly designed.
“Everybody would be able to find something for him or her,” said Frotscher as cited in the press release. “It’s very impressive.”
Markechová especially perceives the stress on quality of space and comfort of each employee positively.
“It’s visible that was rather upper standard some years ago, today is a fundament of office space,” said Markechová. “It is also positive that a lot of enrolled projects were assigned to the hands of experienced architects. The result is intelligent work with space, usage of interesting combination of materials, innovative solutions and especially high quality of detail realisation.”
