HF Mixing Group

In June 2022, the employees of the HF Mixing Group moved into a completely redesigned and extended office building in Freudenberg. The company is the global market leader in production machines for car tyres and other rubber goods – and is on an upwards growth trajectory. It therefore became necessary to expand the long-standing site in North Rhine-Westphalia and adapt it to the company’s dynamic development.

The vision

The idea was to create a contemporary office environment for the growing, dynamic organisation through a new modern building at the company’s rather rural headquarters: a place for cutting-edge work, which also promotes team spirit, dynamism and productivity – flexible and scalable for future growth.

The challenge

The management at HF Mixing envisaged more than just additional office space and wanted the new corporate headquarters to reflect a different working culture. In the previous landscape almost all the workstations were permanently assigned and teams were split across several buildings, meaning that spontaneous encounters and animated discussions were rare in this decentralised setting. The unfavourable distribution of workspaces and inflexible layout hindered group dynamics. Vitra’s assignment was therefore to create a completely new spacious interior concept that promotes more exchanges, greater creativity and increased vitality in a flexible and scalable environment designed for future growth.

The result

The HF Mixing Group invested in the quality and sustainability of its company location, where the vision of a new working culture has become a tangible reality: spanning three floors and 4000 square metres, the company has now created 180 modern dynamic workstations at its head office in North Rhine-Westphalia. Employees work in open office landscapes, interrupted only by transparent partition walls, seating areas and other meeting places. The most communication-oriented areas are the cafeteria and the office lounge spaces alongside the staircase, fostering regular interaction among employees from different floors, departments and teams. The interior design of the new corporate headquarters now perfectly reflects the industrial group’s DNA.

A harmonious blend of tradition and modernity

The guiding principles of the new office environment were ‘a reduced aesthetic’ and ‘Freudenberg skyline’. The materials used echo HF Mixing’s sector of activity: materials such as rubber granulate sheets and rubber flooring were used for the surfaces. References to the traditional buildings in the company’s home region North Rhine-Westphalia are also visible. The defining image of the small town of Freudenberg is that of historic half-timbered houses with slate roofs. They provided the impulse for the design concept: dark metal structures, wooden slats and roof sculptures subtly transfer the Freudenberg architecture from the street into the office. Areas for interaction and communication, on the other hand, are highlighted in a bright, attractive shade of yellow.

Teamwork as a key to success

As Vitra accompanied the project from the very beginning, it was possible to implement a holistic consultation process. Vitra’s Consulting and Planning Studio designed the look of the office spaces, which was then applied throughout the building in close cooperation with w:architekten. The employees at HF Mixing also took an active part in the planning: together with project managers from the industrial group as well as Vitra and w:architekten, they participated in strategy and user workshops at Vitra in Weil am Rhein. This is where the concept for the new working culture came into being and was further developed and refined over the months. In order to bring the jointly developed design concept to life from an early stage, Vitra created renderings of different scenarios within the new building and offered on-site virtual tours. The result was a solution tailored to the exact needs of the industrial organisation.