Olympia is a Dutch employment organization with over 200 franchisees spread over The Netherlands. D/DOCK was assigned to design their new headquarters and the shops, with the challenge of rethinking the way they work and defining the guideline for the future of the shops. With several research-workshops together with Olympia, questions were raised and the base for our designs was set.

While the shops-design is still on early stage, we first delivered the headquarters in Hoofddorp, a vibrant space that reflect and facilitate Olympia’s core values and archetypes. Traditional working areas are combined with flex-spots and unconventional flexible zones, such as the training centre, a multifunctional space that can be used separately or be integrated with the areas around it when needed.

Every space was conceived reflecting the Olympia archetypes, the Explorer and the Everyman, and the different nature of the people, giving a chance for everyone to work as they feel.

The starting point for this concept was taken from the book “ A thousand plateaus” published 1980 by the two philosophers G. Deleuze and F. Guattari. In their publication they define the space as a combination of ‘smooth and striated spaces’. While the ‘smooth space’ is nomadic and fluid, the ‘striated space’ is state-oriented and static, and even if they differ fundamentally in nature, they can only exist in mixture.

This definition reflects the two natures of the Olympias archetypes and it was also used to define and express Olympias new brand identity. When wandering in the Olympia headquarters, one experiences this seamless mixture of smooth and striated spaces.

The response of Olympias employees is very positive, they loved this first step of the rebranding project. The next goal is the transformation of the franchise shops, in collaboration with Furnify to give them an authentic circular identity.