The vly Vision

An immersive HQ to experience the Future of Milk

Within the iconic historical building of Alte Post in Berlin Neukölln, we designed a vision for the new vly headquarters, including a prototyping lab and public Future Food Café where everyone could experience the latest innovations in food-tech.

Vly is developing plant based milk-alternatives that are both delicious and nutritious. For their headquarters, we envisioned a space where people understand more about the science and be become involved in the emerging field of Food-tech.

Location
Berlin, DE
Client
Vly Foods
Year
2022
Area
1.300 m²
Scope
R&D Lab, Prototype Plant,
Office & Food Experience
Status
Unbuilt

Developing a Design Vision

Discover
The look and feel of the spaces were inspired by vly’s brand identity and the company culture. The building geometry overlaps with this aspect and is translated into the spatial volumes and furniture elements.
In the heart of Berlin Neukölln, next door to the City Hall, we found this dream site for vly thanks to our friends at real estate developer coros, who owned and revitalized this historic building.
Being located in one of the busiest areas of Berlin, the vly headquarters would become the perfect hot spot for the community to experience vly’s range of products and for food-tech companies to share their innovations.
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360° virtual tour
We made a 360° virtual tour to optimize our planning process and also to communicate with our client quickly and accurately.
You can experience the space if you were there, taking the two escalators from the main entrance into the counter hall of the post office, an architectural monument from the 1980's.
At the time we made the tour, the Alte Post was a raw diamond under construction. Nothing was visible of what would come and thus, we are allowed to digitally show you around this historic building.
Discover modern and historic architecture combined in a unique building.

Design & DRAW
The complex floor plan had to be analyzed and zoned to have separate but interconnected functions, each with it’s own access while creating a journey for the external visitors.
Space Analysis
Spatial planning takes into account the factors on site and retrofitting the building with services that are required to run a lab.
The lab, office and common areas are planned to visually be barrier-free. Architecture can change how teams work and interact and we aim to create a human centric work environment.
Community Café
Prototyping Lab
Community Café
Prototyping Lab

SMART labs
Our intent was to break the traditional notion of how labs would be in isolated closed rooms. Here, all rooms are interconnected with each other, both visually and spatially.
Around the lab rooms, there are focus and collaborative zones for the vly team.

Public Café & Community
We also planned a user journey for the visitors of the "Future Food Café". Planning the circulation and zoning for different use cases and still have them connected as a whole was a major challenge. Along the walkway the visitors learn about the space, the science and the future of food, which they can get a taste of in the café.
Moreover, we designed an inviting community garden on the terrace, further adding to the intent of promoting plant based food.
The Future Food Café is planned to engage people to try new food-tech innovations and is planned to spark discussions. The open room layout with flexible furniture in the café and co-working space is meant for transformation according to need. The bar is a part of the tasting and testing hotspot.
Tasting & Sensing is at the core both the café as well as the food development happening in the vly labs. Every week, plenty of experienced food testes come in and try the latest developments and variants, before the come to the market.
We would have created a complete monochromatic space, where the products are the focus. Tasting, smelling and multi sensory interactions are made possible in this room.