Business playground

London, UK

Mathieu Lehanneur and Pullman reinvents meetings with the “Business Playground” room as a perfect illustration of the “blurring” of private and professional life. This room reflects the brand’s “Work hard, Play hard” motto as well as its guests’ lifestyle. It combines performance and pleasure with a fresh take on the traditional aspects of a meeting: a meeting table designed like a poker table, a private area for informal conversations or breaks, and a cabinet of curiosities. All these features are designed to stimulate creativity and reinvent international hospitality codes. The Pullman London St Pancras will premier the “Business Playground” room from November 2013, before it is gradually rolled out across the network starting in 2014. CanopyBreak Detail Pullman is an event organization expert, with over 30,000 events organized in its hotels. It aims to offer a unique meeting experience and remove the increasingly artificial barrier between work and relaxation. To do so, it invited designer Mathieu Lehanneur to create a new approach to workspaces and design a boardroom that reflects its “Work hard, play hard” motto. The “Business Playground” room is a far cry from very formal conventional meeting rooms and disrupts the codes of business with style by focusing on defining elements and unique furniture create specially for Pullman. “Poker Table” The table is a key element in a small gathering like a board meeting. In the “Business Playground” room, the central table is given an additional dimension. Mathieu Lehanneur has reinterpreted it as a poker table which notably features a leather edge. This table is designed to make people want to participate in the meeting, just as they would want to engage in a game, they want to take part, be a player and stay constantly focused. With this table made of fiberglass, beige leather and Corian®, the meeting becomes a pleasurable experience, a game. This table is a symbol of the business meeting, but it includes ingenious features inspired by the world of games. It invites participants to lean into it and rest their elbows and hands on it. GeneralView “There are two ways to sit at a meeting table: leaning against the backrest of the chair, or leaning forward on your forearms. The difference between the two is not without meaning. It says a lot about our relation to others and about what’s happening in the meeting.