In Maison Workwell, we embraced the challenge of addressing a central dilemma of the contemporary office: how can one foster both concentration and latent interaction? More-so, how could one negotiate the paradox between conceiving something that has a unique sense of connectivity, yet also evokes a home-like sensation, a project that simply celebrates life and the complexities of the everyday? As a point of departure, we were in search of spaces that both congregate and separate, arriving to the canons of the circular plan temple. The circle, for us, is a unifying form, centripetal in nature, radiating outward from a center, yet always drawing back to this origin. The program for a contemporary office tower emphasizes an integral link between the exterior form and interior intellectual work. Beginning on the perimeter, these spaces for exchange, protected in shadow for comfort and intimacy, provide a transition from the concentration of work, opportunities for interaction, dialogue, or simply a pause for a breath of fresh air.

Large stretches of a shuttered wooden facade slide down on the outer edge of the circle, allowing the areas to fully open or close, in order to provide a maximum relationship between the user and the surrounding, depending on any given need. We can say the project embodies many narratives. There is the story of its unique materiality, there is the story of its unique image, but one story in particular is second to none: the story of updating the conventional tower type. Towers with very rare exception have a central core, we can think of only a handful of examples. However, the center, a natural place of congregation seemed ripe the 21st century office tower. We reconceptualized the building type, updated tradition, and created something that is distinct. It is distinct not simply in the search to be different, but distinct for a good reason: promoting latent collaboration by moving and viewing across the center, creating a catalogue of different workspaces, and the flexibility allowed by inhabiting the center. We have reinvented the tower, displaced the core to the side and are left with not a core, not an atrium, but habitable collaborative space. Collaboration sample remains at the core of the project because its very essence -the plan- so allows. The Maison Workwell tower is an exercise in making architecture out of breaking tradition through traditional devices. Monumental but inconspicuous, it marks a territory, but it doesn’t conquer. It simply, and purely, resolves the initial dilemma.