Client: Grundeigentümer-Versicherung VVaG, Hamburg
Photos : Thilo Müller
The Grundeigentümer-Versicherung insurance company is headquartered on Große Bäckerstraße, in the heart of Hamburg, close to the town hall. It was founded in December 1891. As a mutual insurance company, its policyholders are not just customers, but, under the Articles of Association, members whose elected representatives sit at the General Meetings. This makes it the company's main supervisory authority. Policyholders are mainly property owners, homeowners and landlords.
Some 80 employees (including management) work for the insurance company Grundeigentümer-Versicherung (GEV). In 1995, the company moved from Paulstraße to Große Bäckerstraße. In 2010, GEV began the complete restructuring and modernization of the administration building. To carry out this project, the business had to be outsourced for an entire year. In 2011, the work was completed.
Employees work in what is known as a "combined office": individual compartmentalized offices, with a multifunctional room in the center serving as a communication hub. Workstations are separated by glass walls. To reduce reverberation and floating echoes while preserving transparency, 288 m² of transparent MICROSORBER® fabrics were installed in a double layer on the walls.
When designing the workstations, the client and architects attached great importance to intangible factors, the so-called "soft factors", which contribute to the success of the company as a whole: for example, the layout of the premises, visual relationships, corporate design and the integration of technology through the deliberate use of materials, colors, light and acoustics must be sources of efficiency and pleasure in the workplace. Thanks to MICROSORBER® films, this objective was easily achieved: the transparency and acoustic efficiency of the films allow the company's employees to work in optimal conditions.
