CIMB Marketplace:
Inspiring Collaboration Through a Café-Style Hub
Introduction
The multi-award-winning CIMB Marketplace redefines the traditional office lounge with a café-inspired design to create a dynamic communal hub. Located at the heart of Level 4 alongside the front-of-house area, it serves as a central "touchdown space," designed to facilitate collaboration, relaxation, and casual interaction among employees.
Café Culture
Drawing inspiration from Parisian café culture, the Marketplace offers various seating options, including bistro-style dining and café banquet seating, adaptable for informal meetings or other purposes. Meanwhile, the private booths, framed in gold-tinted glass with curved arches, add an element of luxury and exclusivity. Users can also choose to use the tall bar counters in the pantry area or phone booths that accommodate two to four pax.
Colours Galore
The use of a contemporary colour scheme of light greens and blues creates a balanced, calming atmosphere. In addition, CIMB’s brand identity and bold red tones are meticulously woven into the space, creating a striking contrast with the pristine front-of-house waiting lobby.
Natural Beauty
The design also seamlessly integrates elements of nature, with decorative canopies and faux windows adorned with lush hanging plants and lightboxes, evoking an “inside-out” ambience reminiscent of a Parisian streetscape. Planter boxes, mosaic flooring and custom ceiling treatments further define different seating areas while maintaining an open, airy flow.
“We wish to take this opportunity to express our appreciation to your company for undertaking and coordinating the successful completion of our new office premises at 30 Raffles Place. You have acted as a project manager to help ensure that the design and build elements of the project blended well together. Without your keen attention to detail and the hardworking presence of your team members, this project would not have met the tight deadlines set out.
As a good example, the weekly project meetings helped to ensure that the whole list of members involved, ranging from the consultants, main contractor, vendors, our internal project team and the business unit representatives, worked as a team to complete the project successfully. This was no small achievement, considering the challenges we faced, operating in a Covid-19 environment, with labour and materials constraints as well as shipping delays, which rendered our task a difficult one. We are very pleased with the final outcome, attested to by our staff’s expression of delight of the new workplace environment and thank you for a job well done.
