As a Bank significantly affected by the 2008 crash the new owners brought in a team to turn the Bank round amongst whom was COO, Martin Thomas, our client for the Xchanging Transaction Bank in Sossenheim. He invited us to find them a new Head Office in Vienna to re-organise their existing Head Office in Klagenfurt into a service centre and to introduce a new design concept across the regional head offices in Podgorica, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Banja Luka.
The design concept revolved around connecting all the component offices of the Bank together into a “single virtual bank” spanning the very fragmented region. Modest, surprising, well-designed was our search mantra for the Vienna Head Office and the driving ethos for all the others. All space assets were to be on a single reservation system (Concedo) so staff may reserve space from anywhere to anywhere. We also engaged broadcast quality (Cisco) telepresence audio/visual to be installed in each location in a common “Egg” shaped video conference room. All the locations were replanned as open space with a number of elements creating variety of choice for both working and informal meeting space to encourage internal and external communication.
The end result is a highly economic Bank with an interesting and varied environment for its staff.
