Cube Route Logistics Office Interior

AOJ’s interiors has created a visually striking office interior which is harmonised to the building’s architecture, while at the same time ensuring the staff can best interact, work and play (even with puppies…).

Located on Malibongwe Drive in Randburg, the new head office for Cube Route Logistics, a pet food distribution company offering logistics services countrywide and into southern Africa, is a P-grade equivalent office block of roughly 1000 square metres with a warehouse and e-Pet store facility measuring approximately 9000 square metres.

“The most successful projects are when you get to harmonise the whole design, the interior and the exterior into one holistic vision,” says Mike Rassmann, one of the partners at AOJ.

Having designed the building, a non-conventional façade featuring an array of off-shutter concrete columns over an envelope of coloured wall panels and glass curtain walls, AOJ set about creating an office interior which harmonises with the striking façade. With a very modern exterior, AOJ wanted to create a contemporary office interior as well, to complement the geometric language of the building. The reduction of internal columns on the perimeter of the office space meant less space planning restrictions, while setbacks in the façade at strategic points made for a plan with seemingly random geometric form with angles that allowed for many interesting design opportunities for AOJ to work with.

The office interior had to cater for the brand identities of two separate, but related companies under one roof (a logistics company for pet projects and an e-Pet store). Through the use of colour AOJ was able to highlight and clearly identify the difference between these two brands (green for the e-pet store and blue for Cube Route), and by spatially organising these on independent floors an operating efficiency was possible. The e-pet store and more public interfacing facilities were grouped on ground floor leaving the more private first floor for office and admin activities.

“It is a very open company,” explains AOJ’s Alessio Lacovig, “And you get the sense that they offer a personal touch in the way they work.”  They have a strong pet-centred culture and you can often find pets around the office. AOJ also made sure that the office interior was future proofed by making very generous volumes and larger than necessary floor plates, giving this current tenant or any future ones the ability to more easily grow and re-invent the interiors when necessary.  “Even if staff are added there will still be space and future growth built into the open plan design,” notes Rassmann.