Team Vitality, a French eSports organization, has recently opened its new HKS-designed Paris headquarters. The goal of the team’s new physical space is to make the brand appealing to a wider audience beyond eSports fans.
The design combines technology, retail, fashion, food and beverage elements to create a space that more closely resembles a neighborhood hangout rather than a competitive gaming facility. The four-story facility is housed in a traditional Haussmannian building near Place de la République and includes private office space and technology-packed rooms for content production and projection.
The ground floor acts as a public storefront and uses large LED video boards that face the street to project content to passersby. A central, flexible event space is flanked by entrances through the Vitality shop and a cafe. The Vitality store has a boutique aesthetic while the cafe is designed with wood and warm finishes, forgoing typical eSports merch stands or food and beverage locations.
The venue, known as V.Hive, can accommodate everything from educational experiences, to live music, to product launches by the team’s sponsors and partners. It is flexible enough to change quickly throughout the day. The ground floor is tied together by a “digital ribbon,” a series of LED video boards that flows from one space to the next, that acts as a canvas from content from Team Vitality and its partners.
See Also: Gamers paradise: The rise of eSports arenas
Audio and lighting can be varied from room to room and a central control room allows the team to orchestrate how digital content appears on the LED boards throughout the building.
“We wanted to create a physical venue for Team Vitality that is truly flexible for all their user groups: Vitality staff, players, fans and partners to gather publicly and privately in a space that would elevate the brand,” said Chi Bhatia, the Senior HKS Designer on the project in the firm’s London sports and entertainment studio, in a release. “This is one of the first true expressions of an eSports brand evolving into a lifestyle brand, via physical infrastructural investment for consumer-facing environments. We are still learning a lot in the space and wanted to challenge the notion of what truly is an ‘eSports venue.’”
See Also: The largest eSports stadium in North America opens in Arlington, Texas
Related Stories
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Contractors [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Turner, Whiting-Turner, Skanska top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest contractors in the United States.
| Jul 18, 2014
Engineering firms look to bolster growth through new services, technology [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Following solid revenue growth in 2013, the majority of U.S.-based engineering and engineering/architecture firms expect more of the same this year, according to BD+C’s 2014 Giants 300 report.
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Engineering/Architecture Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Jacobs, AECOM, Parsons Brinckerhoff top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest engineering/architecture firms in the United States.
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Engineering Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Fluor, Arup, Day & Zimmermann top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest engineering firms in the United States.
| Jul 18, 2014
Top Architecture Firms [2014 Giants 300 Report]
Gensler, Perkins+Will, NBBJ top Building Design+Construction's 2014 ranking of the largest architecture firms in the United States.
| Jul 18, 2014
2014 Giants 300 Report
Building Design+Construction magazine's annual ranking the nation's largest architecture, engineering, and construction firms in the U.S.
| Jul 17, 2014
A new, vibrant waterfront for the capital
Plans to improve Washington D.C.'s Potomac River waterfront by Maine Ave. have been discussed for years. Finally, The Wharf has started its first phase of construction.
| Jul 8, 2014
Does Zaha Hadid’s Tokyo Olympic Stadium have a design flaw?
After being criticized for the cost and size of her stadium design for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, a Japanese architect points out a major design flaw in the stadium that may endanger the spectators.
| Jul 8, 2014
Frank Lloyd Wright's posthumous gas station opens in Buffalo
Eighty-seven years after Frank Lloyd Wright designed an ornamental gas station for the city of Buffalo, the structure has been built and opened to the public—inside an auto museum.
| Jul 7, 2014
7 emerging design trends in brick buildings
From wild architectural shapes to unique color blends and pattern arrangements, these projects demonstrate the design possibilities of brick.
