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Avito Kazan

Avito office, Kazan

TOTAL AREA 1304 sq m

ADDRESS Kazan, st. Moskovskaya 19/8, BC Kremlin Plaza, 3rd floor

DESIGN 2022

CONSTRUCTION 2022

About Project

Avito is the leading online ads service in Russia. The company's staff is growing rapidly, respectively, new customer support offices are opening in different cities outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Bussiness Task

The company's goal was to build the best technological office in the third capital of Russia. Kazan was chosen based on a combination of factors. Among them are the attractiveness in terms of logistics, personnel and the real estate market, high tourism potential and the standard of living in the city. For all these qualities, Kazan confidently outstripped other cities.

Space organization

The priority was the comfort of employees, so next to the open workspaces there are lounge areas, co-working spaces, gaming areas and high tables used as hot desks (an electronic booking system is provided). There are areas for developers and separated areas for voice support.

Avito is actively developing the ESG agenda, including within the company, which is why separate waste collection is also practiced in the Kazan office, and employees do not have individual trash cans.

Design idea

The author of the design project was ABD architects. The synergy of modern art, culture of the Republic of Tatarstan, technologies and corporate values of the company, which was reflected through pixel art created by artificial intelligence, was chosen for decoration.

The art painting by Stenopis artists reflects Kazan architecture, full of ornaments and symbols to the office walls. In total, 45 zones were touched upon by the artworks – fr om the reception to the kitchen and corridors. These are not only murals, but also decorative installations, panels, collages, etc. There is, for example, WOW - a wall on which objects prohibited for sale on Avito are depicted and crossed out.


Meeting rooms are named by the Tatar rivers and cities. Each has an individual design and thematic decor, including Tatar and Turkish carpets, graphic images and even musical and sound accompaniment (from songs about the Volga to the cries of seagulls). For example, in the “River” conference room, on one of the walls has an installation of colored soft felt fish, and against the the painting with seagulls is a Kama record-player.

In one of the lounge areas, the artists made a painting based on the pattern of a 19th-century Tatar towel, with an installation of 13 black PC mice. Mice, like racing cars, stand at the start ready to race across the drawing. Nearby on the wall is an installation of 19 canvases depicting cats. Some of them wear skullcaps to emphasize the mixture of Russian and Tatar cultures. The canvases are made in the technique of silk-screen printing, and reference to the works of Andy Warhol.

The meaning of the installation takes from a well-known story about how in the middle of the 18th century, Kazan cats, by the highest decree of Empress Elizaveta Petrovna, were brought to St. Petersburg, to the Winter Palace, to hendle with the mice. Cats are rushing on a train to St. Petersburg, canvases symbolyze the wagons on wheels. The two walls of the lounge are tied together into a one space and refer to the game of cat and mouse.


In the game zone with a sofa and a kicker, the wall painting is made in the style of pixel art, based on the motives of the Tatar carpet ornament of the 19th century, with images of the heroes of the 8-bit game. The painting is complemented by an installation of real carpet flappers with an invitation to play a pixel computer game.

The manager's office is filled with graphics with elements of retro style, pop art and sketch, referring to the image of  the Volga shipping company of the early 20th century. The sound of music and songs about the Volga is hidden in yellow plates on the walls. The design of the office is completed by an installation of three pages of a real atlas of the Volga River Pilot, stylized as a carousel of images on the website on the Internet.

The interior of the administration room is designed in a strict black and white style with the addition of light graphics depicting the life of the fantasy city of Avito with many different scenes wh ere people buy and sell their things, send and receive packages with purchases, engage in various crafts, etc. The drawing is placed on a triptych of canvases and is supported by a large image of trees on the opposite wall. Volumetric shelves-houses are installed on the trees.

For the kitchen, the artists prepared collages based on photographs of the old Kazan of the late 19th - early 20th century, mixed with a color image of food: red pepper, French baguette, french fries, broccoli and fried chicken.

Spectacular solutions in the interior are open ceilings, glass partitions, allowing light to freely pour into all areas of the office. It was decided to keep the overall color scheme in both bright and muted colors of the Avito brand: green, red, blue and purple.


Some of the items used in the design were purchased at Avito, and some of the furniture was brought from the St. Petersburg office.

Opinions
Irina Prisedskaya,
Senior Project architect, ABD architects
For us, working with a customer like Avito is always a joy and a kind of game as well as the pleasure of mutual creativity. The customer is so unique and creative that we, as architects, saw our task in creating a comfortable universal space, the place where the customer will be able to “paint” his portrait and express himself as much as possible.

Our customer is a co-author in this project, a generator of new unusual ideas. We only needed to provide "blank canvas", organized conveniently compositionally and technically.

The site was not easy with its low ceilings and beams, repeating rows of narrowly placed columns and small windows. The main task was to turn these tasks into advantages. Therefore, the columns and beams were painted in different bright colors (avoiding monotony in rhythm), the ceilings were left open, and the walls were covered with graphics that expand the space and enable employees to take their eyes off the screen and allow them to change the picture to bright, lively, beautiful, and different.

It was a very interesting project for us, thanks to the fact that the customer was given space and opportunity for improvisation. We ourselves did not know exactly what the result would look like until the very end. It was an interesting and intriguing game. Such trustful cooperation is very pleasing and inspiring.



Anna Bogdanova,
Administrative Director of KEH eCommerce LLC (Avito)
Each Avito office is unique. In the design of the Kazan office, we created a synergy of contemporary art, technology, corporate values of Avito and, of course, the culture of the Republic of Tatarstan. In the wall paintings you can see elements of Kazan architecture, national ornaments and symbols.

We understand that employees tend to spend most of the working week in the office. Therefore, we made our Kazan office as cozy and convenient as possible, sometimes even competing in comfort with the home comfort.

The space organized in the open space layout, there is a reception, meeting rooms, closed capsules for calls, a kitchen, places for collaborations and relaxation, as well as dressing rooms. In order for light to freely get into all areas of the office, we decided to make open ceilings and glass partitions.



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