Pacific Ace is a Philippine-based financial firm that offers overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong reliable remittance service under the name Pacific Ace Forex. In supporting a healthy and lively working environment, PA office is designed upon “Biophilia”, a love of life and living things, specifically referring to the connection humans feel with nature, that has a positive effect on productivity, mood and healthy. “Bringing Nature to Indoor, Refreshing Office Space” is our design philosophy. Ultimately, we hope to “Bring Philippine Nature into HK Working Culture”.

We have carried a thorough research on evaluating our customers' need - There are two important Filipino core values – 1) Filipinos have close family ties. They treat staff and customers as their family members. They love to share and gather for celebration and party. Pacific Ace teaches their customers the most affordable way to borrow money. This family solidarity keeps them positive amidst everything. 2) Filipinos show a love and respect for nature of all its wonder and significance, and thus want to bring nature into home and office. Hence, we are motivated to create an interior green oasis that breeds a healthy, happy and friendly culture. Design concepts 1) Homey Design The use of materials including wood and grass and natural thematic room design (e.g. rice terraces) offer staff and customers a feeling of ‘Make Yourself at Home’. 2) Biophilic design Given how an experience of nature can elicit a restorative response, our design provides staff and customers visual connection, material connection with nature and sunlight control. 3) Simplistic Design To overcome the space limitation, our sleek interior design re-organizes the office structure that aims to provide a better storage and facilitate the organization of work-in-process.

Having a nature-centric office does not only make people happier, but enhances the brand image. Adding plants can circulate fresh air, reduce stress and muffle noise whilst inserting realistic wood accents can instill a sense of warmth. Staff feel truly happy staying in office because the Rice Terrace Room gives them a chance to take a brain break and connect to nature. Getting rid of fear, they gather to have lunch in this nature break room. It also gives staff and customers a nostalgic feeling of returning their motherland – Philippines. On the other hand, the office is redesigned so that there are now more spaces for storage. Generally, it boosts the staff’s productivity.

From branding to promotion, we hope to develop an overall design solution that not only enhances its green brand image, but to an international finance bank for large community in Hong Kong. We believe that our design for Pacific Ace is a blueprint for future office interiors – bring nature into office and innovation for interior. It is a neighborhood that makes staff and customers feel like they are in Philippine. We respect Filipino’s Happy and Helpful culture. Thus, we hope to break through the misconceptions on which Hongkongese have projected them through our design.

Pauldesign provides a comprehensive interior design service for revitalizing Pacific Ace Office. Risa, our interior designer, reorganizes and redesigns the space to support optimally all the activities the area is used for. Rebecca, our branding designer, combines our ideas and customers’ opinion to develop the environmentally friendly signage and covers of catalogues and cards. We also utilise participatory methods like interviews to collect staff’s comments. We are committed to offer support for change management. In addition, our team provide a wide range of services for space utilisation measurements.

5 million is used in total.

In fact, employee engagement positively correlates with working environment. Yet, we found out that the biggest problem with its previous office design is poor spatial planning. The working area is small and not functional, especially when it is lack of storage space for documents and files, leading to a cluttered working environment. As a result, staff are reluctant to stay long in office and prefer eating in park or open area. Notably, most office space is occupied by the waiting customers every weekend. After project completion, PA staff revealed to us that they really appreciated the rice terrace design as they felt like they were back to Philippines. Meanwhile, customers can take a rest in rice terrace room while they are waiting for their turns. Its multifunction has eased a shortage of space.