Designing A Glocal Icon

In creating the headquarters for Bosch in Pune, the NCUBE Design team not only infuses the building with a global, international aesthetic but also brings in quirky elements of Pune city, making the office a perfect ambassador for a ‘glocal’ design.

- Sharmila Chakravorty

Several factors are at play when a global company decides to set up a regional office, halfway around the world with a drastically different cultural context. It not only has to retain its global ethos, but also incorporate regional influences, and reflect tangibly both through its offices and workspaces. Then, it must also actively exhibit a common design thread that connects the company’s disparate offices around the world together, as an integral part of the whole, while asserting its own uniqueness within the larger scheme, as well as in its current context.

Finding the right design partner to understand this vision, and accurately translate it spatially is then, perhaps, the most key component to getting this right. After all, an office space or a headquarter building is a substantial investment in terms of time, capital, and effort, in ​addition to brand perception, and is symbolic of putting down roots in a new geography. And underlying all this is the basic requirement that the office spaces must be functional and enhance productivity and foster a feeling of belonging among the employees who would inhabit the space. For the design partner, striking the right balance, evidently, is crucial.