The new 7,600sqm office follows the model developed by Broadway Malyan for Ageas’s new Lisbon headquarters with a completely human-centric workplace focused on building an office community rather than a place where people just go to work.
A second office designed by Broadway Malyan for insurance giant Ageas has been opened in Portugal.
As in Lisbon, the new Porto office is a mixture of formal and informal spaces with various nooks, lounges and meeting rooms that are enhanced by imaginative furnishings and lighting to create a workplace that puts people first.
In total Ageas Group has invested almost 100 million euros in bringing all its employees into single buildings in Lisbon and Porto and Broadway Malyan project lead Joana Mendao said the design approach reflected a desire to transform, not just how people worked but also how they felt in a post-pandemic world.
She said: “The psychology of the workplace has seen a huge shift since the challenges of the recent pandemic and so it is important that the modern office meets the evolving needs of a workforce that has in many instances been away from the traditional work environment and has adapted to different ways of working.
“First and foremost, we wanted these offices to inspire. The model we have created for Ageas is about creating spaces that transform the working experience, stimulate creative thinking and ultimately, enhance productivity.
“Central to the approach was the also the idea of people being able to work anywhere so throughout the offices are a range of spaces that encourage both high and low energy work, enabling people to work alone or together.
“Healthy workplaces that prioritise and promote the wellbeing of end users are also a vital aspect of modern office design and so there are areas both inside and out that encourage interaction, whether for team-focused work or important places of distraction from high focused work.”
Stuart Rough, Broadway Malyan’s Lisbon-based group chairman and global head of workplace, said that shifting expectations and the competition for the very best talent was driving a revolution in office design.
He said: “Workplace culture plays a huge part in attracting, and more importantly retaining, the very best talent and the starting point of this process is delivering employee-centric environments that create positive employee experiences.
“These offices both respond to Ageas’s own values of ‘Care, Dare, Share and Deliver’ while addressing a new reality that workers are looking for a workplaces that are flexible, inventive, technologically enabled and fundamentally designed to make them happy.”
