New IDOM Group Headquarters in Bilbao, Spain

The new IDOM Group headquarters are located
in a former bonded warehouse (a port
bonded warehouse) in the Deusto channel of
the Bilbao’s port. They include an area of over
40,000 square feet dedicated to offices, R&D
areas like a laboratory, prototyping workshops
and social areas. One of the most important
goals of the project was to achieve a wide and
an open-plan working space, with a great intra
and inter departmental visual communication
and without barriers
between the different
levels of duties and
appointments within the
IDOM company. In the
centre of each floor there
is a hall which may be
used to create an area for
secretaries in some instances or also may be
used as an area to make phone calls without
disturbing the other colleagues.
In the widest working spaces, very few offices
were planned to be built though it was planned
to have many meeting rooms or team working
areas. In order to avoid psychological
barriers between the offices, the
rooms and the open space, IDOM
did not want to have a traditional front
office glass door including a fixed
glass and a swing door, but wanted
instead a sliding door to remove those
psychological barriers. The Klein
telescopic and synchronized system,
EXTENDO, was the best one to integrate the different
spaces and to reach the set goal.
Compared to other existing sliding doors systems
available on the market, the EXTENDO
system allows a wider opening by having a
clear passageway without any mechanism left
on the floor.
In order to keep the integrated concept and depending
on the building needs, in some offices,
either recessed tracks or exposed tracks were
used with a special black anodized aluminum finish
matching the dark ceiling. The 2-doors system
allows to open all the panels with only the
first one sliding along a fixed glass panel already
inserted in the same track as the moving panels.