Excerpt: Naturub Factory Head Office by ICONCAST Chartered Architects transforms constraint into creativity, using locally sourced materials and the company’s own products as its design elements. Inspired by Naturub’s colorful tapes and fibers, the interior forms a vibrant core installation, while muted tones of rubber, timber, and dark ceilings frame it. The result is a functional, resourceful workspace with a unique spatial identity rooted in the brand itself.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by architect] The project is a single level 4700 Sq Ft. interior refurbishment for Naturub Head Office. Naturub is a Sri Lankan apparel accessories manufacturer passionate about the products and the people they develop. It’s head office at the factory complex in Mahawila, Panadura, needed refurbishment. Naturub’s existing office was a space resulting from time to time extension and addition of departments and personnel to the floor in alignment with the company’s growth and they recognized the need to organize the office to a functional arrangement for its effective and efficient operation.
The project was designed, developed and fabricated in the import restricted, hyper inflating economic conditions of Sri Lanka. The project execution needed pre-planning, thus the procurement progressed well ahead of site work to enable a minimum period of discomfort in office operations relocation.
Keeping in mind the limited access to resources of Interior finishing material options due to the curtail of imports; we wanted to use the opportunity of the challenging economy to be resourcefully adaptive and to apply locally produced and fabricated alternatives where possible. Sourcing treated rubber planks for both furniture and partitioning appeared feasible and we designed and locally manufactured all work stations and fitted furniture for the project.
Concept: What if a product made by the factory could take center stage inside their own head office? Create a unique spatial identity for Naturub with a product made by Naturub…
Inspired by the factory’s products we thought the space could offer a visual stimulus via the products of Naturub. We employed a material of Naturub’s own making to create a sense of place; an installation art, a dynamic colour-scape made of brightly coloured tape and fiber.
Approach in using Colour: We developed an interior finish and material palette that was colour muted otherwise excepting the tapes and fibers produced at the factory and dyed in their own dye house to occupy visual prominence.
The programme for applying colour to the interior was organized centrally concentrated on a core area of cubicles occupied by the managers, meeting rooms and the reception. Both the ceiling and walls were donned with a high saturation of colour at the center and are treated as ‘planes of interest’. Colour saturation is subdued for the surrounding periphery to form the backdrop for the vibrant central installation.
The dark ceiling, treated rubber walls and neutral toned timber coloured floors draw attention to the only saturated colours present on the elastic tape products. The lightweight tapes bursting in colour wrap the partitions and ceiling in tension adding the only effervescent colours to space.
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