The Design Group Among the Best – Again Wins the Prestigious International Property Awards 2021-2022

The title of Polish “Award Winner” in the International Property Awards competition is once again in the hands of The Design Group architectural studio. In this year’s edition, the jury chose their “underwater” interior design project for oil and gas company TechnipFMC. This is already the second IPA award won by The Design Group – in 2020 they received the award for the realisation of the Łódź branch of Clariant at Monopolis. Moreover, the award-winning TechnipFMC office project was recently named the best office in Krakow in the OfficeSuperstar 2021 competition organised by CBRE.

The Design Group Among the Best

The aim of the International Property Award competition is to identify the most interesting architectural and interior design projects in the world. The selection of the world’s best investments is made by a jury consisting of over 80 leading figures from all areas of the property industry, chaired by 3 British Lords (Lord Caithness, Lord Waverley, Lord Best).

The “Underwater” Office on Four Floors

TechnipFMC is a globally operating concern – active both in the subsea project space and on the surface. The architects at The Design Group closely tied the main design concept of the new headquarters to the company’s activities, arranging many details inside the office referencing the client’s machines, tools and materials: industrial lamps, trusses, containers, yellow technical barriers and reclaimed container doors.

The client was very keen for the look of the new office to reference the architecture of the concern’s other headquarters on one hand, and to stand out from them on the other. With this client need in mind, we decided that the office should architecturally reference what TechnipFMC does – supporting the extraction of resources from the seabed. We therefore defined four levels: the first floor represents the underwater space, the second is the water surface, and the third and fourth floors are the decks of a vessel used during marine operations – explains architect Konrad Krusiewicz, founder of The Design Group.

The office design is personalised in terms of the colours and shapes that reference TechnipFMC’s identity and logo. An impressive void – an open space integrating floors 2, 3 and 4, connected through glazing to floor 1 – creates a sense of unity.

The void zone also symbolically integrates all the teams working on each of the floors, on which we placed open spaces, collaboration areas and meeting rooms. In the previous location, this connection was impossible, which is why the client was very keen for all employees to feel a sense of consolidation in the new office – says Marta Konarska, architect responsible for the office concept.

The void zone is decorated with an installation of 1,000 small glass balls, representing the Subsea Tree – TechnipFMC’s flagship product. This place says a great deal about the company itself, but also caters to the precise minds of the engineers working here – it is technical and raw.

The Chance for Further Awards

The International Property Award is a world-class mark of excellence. It is one of the most prestigious and largest annual architectural competitions in the world for professionals related to the interior and property sectors, running continuously for 27 years. Candidates from various countries can submit their projects in dozens of categories. Entries are assessed by a jury consisting of over 80 industry experts.

Those projects that receive the highest scores in a given country have a chance of winning at the regional level. The highest-scoring winning projects from each region automatically advance to the final stage – the International Property Awards – where the best projects in the world are selected. This means that, in the overall reckoning, The Design Group can win as many as 3 awards for the TechnipFMC office interior project. The main sponsors of the IPA awards include such iconic companies as: Emirates Airlines, Google, Aston Martin, Yamaha Music, Mercedes Benz, Maybank, Bentley Motors and, this year, Rolls Royce.