ARABIAN RADIO NETWORK FZ LLC

Interior design firms

Area: 38,000sqft

Location: Media City, Dubai

Brief/Challenges

Design a high-performance office-cum-studio complex that’s inspiring, trendy, lively, collaborative, future-proof, and is aligned to their culture. Every studio is a brand in its own right; the design and fitout need to reflect each brand’s unique character. Build the largest high-tech multimedia production and acoustic environment that enables the best broadcast quality. Design and build studios with vistas and daylight.

Discover | Design | Deliver

Discover | Design | Deliver: Broadcast studios are generally closed booths without glass windows to avoid acoustic reflectance. We created vistas and brought in daylight, even though glass is a highly reflective material, with smart design solutions and technology. Our operations team had to be super precise and careful while lay out cabling and lighting, given the nature of the very expensive and high-tech systems.

ARN routinely welcome celebrities and high-ranking officials, who need privacy and security. We designed the studios with solutions that kept these fundamentals in mind.

Two other key challenges remained. One to create stronger bonds between multi-functional and varied team cultures. Also, given the interesting shape of the building, ARN offices have two entrances and service cores connecting three wings. How do we connect them? We overcame both these challenges by designing all common facilities and breakout rooms near the circulation axis to establish one seamless connect. We designed long corridors to simulate a running track, which can double up as an event space. This helped to transform a simple space to a dynamic and inspiring one.

The central media server (MCR) demanded a huge space, would have massive noise and heat emissions, and was set up close to the studios. Our team strategically placed the MCR in a glazed space, making it transparent and visually arresting, which then became a design focal point.